In a recent press release the company indicated their servers had been successfully attacked on November 11th, 2021.
The statement reads in part as follows:
"As the result of an internal investigation, it was determined that some data on a file server had been accessed during the intrusion...
In addition to conducting its own investigation, Panasonic is currently working with a specialist third-party organization to investigate the leak and determine if the breach involved customers' personal information and/or sensitive information related to social infrastructure."
The company added that it understands how important their customer data is and they apologized for any inconvenience to their customers.
With the investigation only just getting underway few additional details are available. We don't yet know exactly how many customers were impacted or what data may have been compromised. We expect that as that information becomes clear the company will be getting in contact with impacted users.
If you are a Panasonic customer and you've purchased anything via the company's website be aware that the hack did occur and that it's possible some or all of the information in your profile may have been compromised.
At a minimum it would be prudent to change your password right away and monitor whatever debit or credit cards you had saved and associated with that account. That is in case the card details were compromised.
This has been a tough year for Japanese companies which seem to have entered the crosshairs relatively more frequently than companies based in other parts of the world for reasons not yet fully understood. Here's hoping we get through the rest of 2021 without too many more of these high-profile hacks and that 2022 will be a better year all around.