CUSTOMER DATA PROTECTION WEAKNESSES
The scale of recent cyberattacks has exposed weaknesses in Japanese companies’ ability to protect their wealth of customer data and raised the prospect of surging costs to beef up defences.
“Companies already have standard security measures in place, so if they want to strengthen them further, there is a possibility that the additional cost burden could be quite substantial,” said Shoichi Arisawa, an analyst at IwaiCosmo Securities.
There have been 723 cybersecurity incidents in the year to Oct 20, according to data from TrendAI, exceeding the annual totals in 2025 and 2024.
“Reports may reflect both the threats organizations face and greater visibility into incidents that would previously have gone undetected, been underinvestigated, or remained undisclosed,” said Satoshi Nagano, president of cybersecurity firm ESET Japan.
Park24, which operates the Times car-sharing service, said on Friday it would make 3,000-yen payments to customers following a personal data breach last month.
The company said it would no longer retain identity document images after completing registration verification and expects to book an extraordinary loss of 5.5 billion yen due to responses to the attack and compensation payments.