Kyodo News reports more data leak woes for Benesse Holdings. The correspondence education provider is still dealing with the fallout from a data theft last June that affected 28.95 million customers when a systems engineer working for an affiliate, Synform, downloaded personal information, including children’s names, addresses and birth dates, onto his smartphone. In September, the government ordered Benesse to improve their data protection.
Now the firm has reportedly learned of a new customer data leak at another one of its units.
A temporary employee at Transcosmos Inc., a Benesse Corp. subcontractor for call-center operations, illegally acquired personal data for 23 customers when he was allowed to access the data between March and August last year, Benesse Holdings said on Tuesday.
The stolen data were not leaked to a third party, it said.
While this may not sound like a huge breach, don’t underestimate how seriously the government is taking this one in the wake of last year’s breach.
Read more on The Japan Times.