Japan Pension Service failed to prepare for cyberattacks, report says

The Japan Pension Service's (JPS) slow response to — and lax awareness of — cyberattacks allowed the personal data of 1.25 million people to be hacked in May, an internal survey committee set up by the nation's pension management agency said in a report released on Thursday.

The agency lacked detailed procedures to fend off cyberattacks, as well as awareness of the need to protect personal information, due to structural problems dating back to before the entity was reorganized from the Social Insurance Agency in 2010, it said.

To prevent future cyberattacks, the report said the agency will isolate personal data from the Internet and create a separate entity tasked with information security.