Japanese Lens Maker Hoya Endures Cyber Security Attack on Vital Servers

International Japanese lens maker Hoya learned of an “IT system incident affecting the functional IT system” on March 30, according to a PDF released by the company on April 4. Hoya located a “discrepancy in system behavior” and quickly isolated the servers and alerted proper authorities in the country affected. The swift action of isolating servers and alerting the proper people saved Hoya from losing more servers to the incident. Initial reports lead Hoya to believe that the incident was caused by “unauthorized access to our servers by a third party.” Unauthorized access is a vague explanation, so the incident could be anything from a ransomware attack to a spyware attack. 

Hoya reports that they hired a team of “external forensic investigators” to investigate the incident. In the last decade Hoya has had multiple other incidents, such as a malware attack in 2019 and a data breach in 2021. At the time it is unknown if any client data was stolen during this incident. Hoya is the leading supplier of lenses and has operations in over 30 countries. Any individual working inside of the company could be a vulnerability whether they mean to be or not.  

Due to their frequency of hacks and the need to hire an external team Hoya may be lacking in the cyber security department. I cannot begin to imagine the difficulty managing business and security relations in over 30 countries, but Hoya should seek to invest in their cyber security departments to protect their business and client’s information. However, spotting the discrepancy and isolating their servers as soon as possible likely saved the company from suffering much harsher damage and will quicken their recovery time.  

Hoya promises to “comply with our internal policies and local regulations” and to “restore the systems necessary” for production and sale to customers as quickly as possible.  

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PetaPixel’s report: https://petapixel.com/2024/04/05/japanese-optics-company-hoya-suffers-debilitating-cyberattack/ 

PDF released by Hoya: https://ssl4.eir-parts.net/doc/7741/tdnet/2418411/00.pdf 

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