Loss of Consulting Business Customer Data

The Japan Research Institute, Limited (Head Office: Chiyoda-ku, Tokyo; President: Shunichi Okuyama) has recently discovered that our Shinsaibashi Office may have lost two CD-ROMs containing customer data including personal information. After the possibility was brought to light in April, JRI conducted an extensive internal investigation to establish the facts, and as of now, there is no confirmed case of any customer data being leaked to any outside parties. However, because such a possibility could not be completely eliminated, we have made the decision to notify our customers of the incident.

The two CD-ROMs that may have been lost contained corporate information and employees' personal information of our customers (five enterprises; 1,542 data records), to whom we had extended consulting services between February 2002 and April 2003 in the Kansai Area. The corporate information included business results, copies of consulting agreements, internal rules, organizational charts, etc. The personal information included the name, section/function of affiliation, sex, date of birth, date of joining the organization, etc. of each employee of the customer organizations.

On Monday, the 29th of March, one of our employees who were involved in the above-described consulting services put the above-described CD-ROMs in a cardboard box for delivery. It was established in early April that the entire box containing the CD-ROMs had been missing due to mishandling at the time of handing over the box to the shipping company. The box might have been mistakenly disposed of with other wastes, but this remains to be confirmed.

Our organization met with each of the affected customers to explain the situation and extend our sincere apologies. We realize that we should notify all the employees of the affected organizations of the incident and personally apologize to each one of them; however, we decided instead to put our apologies in the form of this public notice, as some of our customers did not wish to disclose the fact that they had been affected. We deeply regret that the incident caused our customers much concern and strain, and wish to express our sincerest apologies.

Should our customers' information be leaked to outside parties or otherwise abused, we will put forward appropriate measures to remedy the situation after consulting with the interested parties.

As a company that handles customer data as part of its business, we recognize the seriousness of allowing such an incident to happen. We will immediately reinforce our internal control and exert utmost efforts to prevent any recurrence of a similar incident in the future.

All customer inquiries to:
Customer Support Contact, The Japan Research Institute, Ltd.
Osaka: 06-6534-5198, Tokyo: 03-3288-8281, 9:00 to 17:00, Mon thru Fri

For more information on the contents of this report, please contact:
Yoshihito Sato of Public Affairs Department, The Japan Research Institute, Ltd.,
at 03-3288-4607