Japanese brewing giant Asahi Group Holdings on Monday announced that its operations in the country have been disrupted by a cyberattack.
The incident, the company said, resulted in system failures that affected orders and shipments at all its subsidiaries in the country, as well as call center operations, customer service desks included.
Reuters reported that production at some of Asahi’s 30 domestic factories has been suspended due to the cyberattack.
“At this time, there has been no confirmed leakage of personal information or customer data to external parties,” the company said in a Monday notice.
Asahi said it is investigating the attack and working on restoring the affected systems, but could not provide an estimated timeline for recovery.
“The system failure is limited to our operations within Japan,” it said.
The company has not disclosed the nature of the cyberattack it fell victim to, but the system-wide outage could indicate that file-encrypting ransomware might have been used.
SecurityWeek has emailed Asahi for additional information on the attack and will update this article if the company responds.
One of the largest breweries in Japan, Asahi owns several known international beer brands, such as Grolsch, Peroni, and Pilsner Urquell, as well as Fullers in the UK, which produces London Pride.
“While the disruption is currently confined to one country, Asahi has a significant market share in Japan of almost 40%. Therefore, disruption to production will be costly to Asahi and potentially re-sellers,” Immersive senior cyber manager Kevin Marriott said.
“As we have seen recently with the retail sector and JLR, production and supply chain halts can be extremely expensive for businesses. This is why having procedures in place that protect operations is crucial,” Marriott added.
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