Nissan North America data leak impacts thousands of employees

The data breach incident in Nissan North America last year still caused massive compromises for relevant individuals. According to reports, the threat actors who targeted the company’s external VPN and shut down systems in exchange for a ransom exposed the personal information of approximately 53,000 current and former employees.

Nissan explained that they had alerted relevant law enforcement agencies about last year’s data breach. However, their investigations uncovered new details of the attack and its impact on their workers.

Moreover, this automobile-producing company revealed that the threat actor attacked its external VPN and shut down specific company systems before demanding a ransom. However, the corporation states that these attackers did not have any of their systems encrypted during the hack.

In addition, the company claimed that its follow-up examination of the attack, conducted in cooperation with a third-party service provider, controlled the attack and eliminated the threat. However, the subsequent investigation found that the hacker had accessed several files on local and network shares, most of which included business information.

 

Nissan North America observed these discoveries earlier this year.

 

Last February, Nissan North America revealed that its investigation identified exposed personal information primarily relating to current and former NNA (Nissan) employees.

According to the company’s data breach statement to the Office of the Maine Attorney General, the exposed details included a personal identifier that included names and social security numbers. However, the company insisted they did not find evidence that the threat actors accessed any financial information or files.

The carmaker has already disseminated notification letters to potentially impacted people. In the letter, Nissan advised the recipients to sign up for their free two-year credit monitoring and identity theft protection program to limit the risk of data exposure.

These new details about last year’s hack show how Nissan became a primary target of multiple security incidents over the previous few years. Therefore, every individual related to the company, especially those who previously worked for Nissan, should be more cautious about their digital presence as various threat actors seemingly follow a trend of targeting automakers.