Nihon Kotsu, Japan’s largest taxi operator, said that its systems were impacted in a cyberattack, causing the company to close down some of its infrastructure.
The incident happened last week and impacted business operations such as the company’s taxi dispatch system, currently offline.
Nihon Kotsu has an annual revenue of around $1 billion.
The company has 18,228 employees and has 8,588 taxis and over 2000 chauffeur vehicles.
Nihon Kotsu said in a statement, “We have confirmed that our internal systems were subjected to unauthorized external access (malware infection)”. It further added that “immediately after detecting the unauthorized access, we implemented emergency measures, such as disconnecting systems to prevent further damage.”
The impact
The company has closed down systems to offline to stop the threat but it has widely caused disruption in services.
The incident has disrupted web booking, car hire, reservation management, few internal systems, and telephone dispatch service.
Nihon Kotsu advised people to use the ‘GO’ taxi app instead, or use a taxi stand for booking a Nihon Kotsu vehicle. It is a major operational damage for a company that has one of Tokyo’s biggest fleets but the manual working is still operational. The hire car reservation system is offline.
In a different announcement, Nihon Kotsu said that the “labor taxi” service for pregnant women is shut down in a few areas.
Investigation
The firm has brought in external cybersecurity experts to assist in investigating if there has been a data leak. The internal network has been separated to limit further spread.
Currently, no data leak has been confirmed and Nihon Kotsu will provide updates via official channels. “We are currently conducting a detailed investigation with specialized agencies into whether and to what extent data has been leaked. At this time, no information leak has been confirmed. However, in the unlikely event that we discover any leak or potential leak of personal information of our customers or related parties, we will promptly make an official announcement and contact those affected individually, in accordance with the law,” Nihon Kotsu said.
What next
Customers of Nihon Kotsu are cautioned not to click on any links in suspicious communications purporting to be from the company and not to open anything they receive.
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