Data belonging to 5,698 companies, including information used for their websites, have disappeared since a system failure last week knocked out a rental server service operated by a Yahoo Japan Corp. subsidiary, the company said Tuesday.
"Regrettably, we have determined that we cannot retrieve the data," Firstserver Inc. said on its website. The Osaka-based firm also said it is unable to rebuild the system, and that it plans to compensate the affected customers.
The system failure occurred around 5 p.m. Wednesday when the company tried to upgrade the server system's security, it said.
Firstserver attributed the glitch to problems with its computer programming and operational procedures. It also lost the backup data.
The Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry said it is investigating the trouble, including whether the lost data involved private information.
Firstserver became a subsidiary of Yahoo Japan in November 2004 and provides a rental server service for more than 50,000 customers.