The system paralysis of a company is affecting not only the company’s affiliates but also the systems and operations of its partners connected to the logistics and distribution networks, which is causing further damage.
According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun on the 20th, the e-commerce company “A School” was infected with ransomware on the previous day and suffered a system failure. The prospects for system recovery have not yet been determined, and external leakage of personal information or customer data is under investigation. After confirming the cyberattack, As School suspended all orders and shipments to corporate customers such as “A School,” “Soroelu Arena,” and “Rohaco” for individual customers, and all orders that came in on the 19th were canceled. On the same day, the company also announced the failure of its online store logistics system. As of 9 p.m. the previous day, access to the website, purchase of products, request for a monthly service, and display of some web contents have all been suspended. The timing of the resumption has not been determined, and shipments of orders that have already been received have also been suspended. There is also a high possibility that the payment of points will be delayed. Some analysts say that the failure is a chain effect of As School’s system paralysis. Unmanned goods online stores are using Askul Logistics for some delivery services. As the chronological order of the system failure occurs is correct, Askul’s infection seems to have spread to unmanned products. Earlier, Japanese beer and beverage giant Asahi Group Holdings suffered a system failure after a cyber attack that was believed to be ransomware on the 29th of last month. Orders, shipments and call centers for liquor, beverages, and food in Japan were paralyzed, and production of its main factories was temporarily suspended.
Asahi HD has not been able to produce a full recovery outlook even now, three weeks later. As a result, the schedule for the settlement of accounts and the announcement of new products was postponed, and Asahi products were in short supply in restaurants and retail stores. Asahi HD’s system failure also affected its competitors. As customers’ alternative orders surged, other beer companies such as Santori, Sapporo, and Kirin are also adjusting shipments. Santori announced on the 17th that it will stop selling 13 types of gifts at the end of the year. Sapporo Beer also canceled the sale of 10 types. As the load on the production and distribution sites increased due to a surge in alternative demand, measures were taken to supply products stably. The market predicts that a prolonged system failure will result in a loss of up to 9 billion yen to Asahi HD. Hiroshi Saji, chief analyst at Mizuho Securities, said, “If it takes about a month to recover, there is a possibility of direct loss of about 9 billion yen.” This is about 5% of the net profit forecast for December 2025 settlement. The damage is expected to be even greater if the loss of sales opportunities and information leakage measures are added during the delay in shipments.
Ransomware attacks against companies have been continuing in Japan recently. According to the National Police Agency, 116 damage reports were reported in the first half of 2025, the highest ever recorded in the first half of 2025.
Experts point out that the digital transformation (DX) drive has revealed blind spots where a single damage can have a wide impact. According to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun, the distribution industry, including food, distributes various products for inventory management, and often builds large-scale systems by integrating software used by its own companies and affiliates to cut costs. As a result, a single damage spreads like dominoes. Security experts point out, “The larger the system, the wider the scope of the failure and the more difficult it is to recover.” In fact, in April last year, food company Ezaki Glico made an error in the process of converting its old system to an integrated system, delaying shipments of some refrigerated products for about half a year. The company calculated a special loss of 6.4 billion yen as a cost of responding to the failure at the time of settlement in the same year.
SAM KIM
US ASIA JOURNAL
