Airbus Suffers Data Breach, Some Employees’ Data Exposed

Though the company did not elaborate on the nature of the hack,
it claimed that the security breach did not affect its commercial
operations. So, there’s no impact on aircraft production.

Airbus confirmed that the attackers unauthorized accessed some
data earlier this month, which the plane manufacturer claimed was
“mostly professional contact and IT identification details of some
Airbus employees in Europe.”

“Investigations are ongoing to understand if any specific data
was targeted; however we do know some personal data was accessed,”
Airbus said in its press
release published on Wednesday.
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After detecting the security breach, the plan manufacturer started
an investigation to determine the origin of the hack and to
understand the full scope of the data breach and if any specific
data was targeted.

The company has begun taking “immediate and appropriate actions
to reinforce existing security measures,” which were not enough to
keep the hackers out of their systems, “and to mitigate its
potential impact” so that it can prevent similar incidents from
happening in the future.

The company has also instructed its employees to “take all
necessary precautions going forward,” to strengthen their security
defenses.

Airbus also said it was in contact with the relevant regulatory
authorities and the data protection authorities pursuant to the
European Union’s new GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation)
rules.

Airbus is the world’s second-largest manufacturers of commercial
airplanes, after Boeing which was also hit by a cyber attack (a
variant of the infamous WannaCry
ransomware) in March last year that “affected a small number of
systems” with no impact on production.
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