Electronic component manufacturer Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd. recently issued an apology for thousands of documents leaked in June.

The apology statement stated that it apologized for the incident that occurred on June 28, when a subcontractor downloaded a project management data file containing 72460 pieces of information, which contained the bank account information of the company’s employees and business partners.

More than 30,000 documents contained business partner information like company name, address, associated names, phone numbers, email addresses and bank account numbers. The companies are based in Japan, China, the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, the US and the EU, but the enterprises "subject to customer information are only China and the Philippines."

Over 41,00 documents about employees were in the leak as well, similarly containing names, addresses and bank account numbers. The employees were based in the company's offices in Japan, China, the Philippines, Singapore, the US and the EU.

"On July 20, 2021, it was confirmed that an employee downloaded the project management data including our business partner information and personal information to a business computer without permission and uploaded it to the personal account of an external cloud service in China," Murata CEO Norio Nakajima said.

"In addition, we have received reports from a survey of external cloud service providers that it was confirmed that the information taken out was never copied or downloaded by a third party. The uploaded data has already been deleted from the business PC and external cloud storage service. No virus infection or cyberattack has been confirmed in this matter," Nakajima added.

The company said it interviewed the subcontractor on July 8, who admitted to downloading the information and then uploaded it to a private cloud account.

"On the same day, the uploaded data was deleted under the supervision of the subcontractor," Nakajima said. .