Tokyo, Nov. 13 (Jiji Press)–GMO Internet Group Inc. said Friday that the financial impact of an unauthorized access incident on its business so far is expected to reach approximately 3.05 billion yen. Much of the expected impact stems from compensation payments to customers who suffered financial losses from unauthorized transactions due to the cyberattack. The costs will be booked in the fiscal year ending in December. GMO Executive Vice President Masafumi Yasuda apologized for the incident at a briefing on the company’s January-September earnings, saying the company takes seriously the fact that it has undermined public trust. Yasuda said GMO has received compensation claims covering 2,943 accounts and totaling 2.99 billion yen. The company is also expected to pay up to about 130 million yen in 5,000-yen consolation payments, as well as a possible special payment of up to 3 million yen for a customer whose personal information was made public following the data breach. GMO is currently conducting a comprehensive review of security measures across its businesses using artificial intelligence, which it plans to complete by Saturday. According to GMO Internet Inc., a subsidiary of GMO Internet Group, the suspension of services affected by the cyberattack is expected to reduce revenue in 2026 by 300 million yen, while security-related expenses are expected to increase. In the cyberattack against GMO, servers the company had lent out for automated foreign exchange margin trading cloud services suffered unauthorized access, and customer accounts were used to conduct fraudulent transactions. On Oct. 27, the company said that personal information believed to belong to a customer had been published on a website apparently operated by the attackers. END [Copyright The Jiji Press, Ltd.]
