Japanese brewing giant Asahi has halted production and suspended shipments at up to 30 plants following a cyber attack that caused a system failure across its Japanese operations.
The incident has also disrupted call centre and customer service operations.
While Asahi owns a 40% share of the Japanese beer market, its European and UK brands, including Peroni, Grolsch, and Fullers, remain unaffected.
Asahi stated it is actively investigating the attack, but no timeline for resuming normal operations has been provided. Further details on the nature of the attack and its cause have yet to be released. This attack is part of a broader pattern of high-profile cyber incidents in major retailers, such as Harolds.
Andy Ward, SVP International of Absolute Security, said, “The Asahi attack shows just how costly operational downtime can be when cyber resilience isn’t robust enough to withstand disruption.
Production halts are no longer rare events, our research shows that 77% of UK security leaders say downtime from a cyber-attack is now one of their biggest concerns, and nearly two-thirds (63%) fear the financial fallout from ransomware could cripple their organisation.
This incident also reflects a wider reality with our research highlighting that 59% of CISOs already viewing cyber as the single biggest threat facing the UK right now, above AI and other risks. True resilience isn’t about preventing every attack, but about building the ability to anticipate, withstand and recover fast enough to keep operations running. For manufacturers, where legacy infrastructure, supply chains, and safety are intertwined, that means rethinking resilience strategies before the next outage makes headlines.”
