Two weeks ago we reported that Jaguar Land Rover vehicle production in the UK was halted after the factory was hit by a ransomware attack. Production was halted for more than 3 weeks until the UK government provided an emergency loan of £1.5 billion to prevent the supplier from going out of business. In Japan, the story was different as a cyber attack caused the operations of Asahi liquor company Asahi to be disrupted.
The attack on Asahi Group's operations was detected on Monday morning, causing the company's stock ordering and delivery systems to be completely halted. In total, 30 Asahi factories were affected by the attack believed to have used ransomware.
Stocks of Asahi's drinks such as Super Dry are expected to run out within days at major restaurants and supermarkets if operations are not restored soon. Since yesterday, Asahi has been testing a manual paper-based system on a small scale in an effort to supply the products customers need.
Japanese companies are often victims of cyber attacks due to weak security systems and their frequent payment of ransoms demanded by cybercriminals.
