It has been well documented that customer data breaches can be potentially disastrous for many businesses, hitting shares, sales and growth for years, but corporate data loss is even more catastrophic as the likes of Toyota, Ford, GM, VW, and Fiat Chrysler, and Tesla could soon find out following reports that their most intimate trade secrets have been leaked online.
Sensitive documents from over a 100 manufacturing companies – including confidential trade secrets – have been exposed on a server owned by Level One Robotics, a specialist engineering company, according to UpGuard, an Australian cybersecurity group which spotted the breach.
The group claims the secret files were available for anyone on the Internet to find via a poorly configured server and included robot designs for building cars and NDAs.
“The 157 gigabytes of exposed data include over 10 years of assembly line schematics, factory floor plans and layouts, robotic configurations and documentation, ID badge request forms, VPN access request forms, and ironically, non-disclosure agreements, detailing the sensitivity of the exposed information,” the Upguard team claimed.
“Not all types of information were discovered for all customers, but each customer contained some data of these kinds.”
In a statement, Level One said: “We take these allegations very seriously and we are diligently working to conduct a full investigation of the nature, extent and ramifications of this alleged data exposure. In order to preserve the integrity of this investigation, we will not be providing comment at this time.”
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