Thought Leadership
The tire manufacturer Bridgestone is struggling with the effects of a cyberattack on its production sites. However, the company is confident that it has stopped the attack early enough.
Initially, two plants in the US state of South Carolina and a plant in the Canadian province of Quebec are affected. The first reports of IT problems emerged from the production facilities in Aiken County on September 2. A day later, Canadian media reported similar problems at the Joliette plant.
Bridgestone Americas, the North American division of the group, is a significant economic factor: 50 locations, 55,000 employees and most recently 12 billion dollars in annual sales with an operating profit of 1.2 billion.
Company considers customer data to be secure
“Our team responded quickly to contain the issue in accordance with our established procedures,” Bridgestone told BleepingComputer. According to the company, the response to the “limited cyber incident” was successful.
The company assumes that neither customer data nor system interfaces have been compromised. The ongoing forensic analysis should confirm this assessment.
Supply bottlenecks cannot be ruled out
Nevertheless, damage limitation work is in full swing. Bridgestone wants to minimize disruptions in the supply of its customers – but production losses could lead to bottlenecks. The company has left the nature of the attack open. So far, no hacker group has claimed responsibility for the attack. Bridgestone was already the target of LockBit ransomware in 2022, when data was leaked.
The Bridgestone incident is not alone: just a few days ago, British luxury car manufacturer Jaguar Land Rover suffered a cyberattack. JLR had to proactively shut down its systems following a cyber attack, which “severely impacted” both production and sales activities
