GMO Internet Group president Masatoshi Kumagai and other executives held a press conference on the afternoon of November 2, 2026, to address unauthorized access to the company's services, according to NHKニュース. Kumagai apologized at the briefing and acknowledged that a vulnerability flagged by a subsidiary had not been put to use in running the affected services. The company's top executive also conceded that its security response lacked sufficient speed, 毎日新聞 reported.
Why it matters
The admission that an internal warning about a weakness went unheeded shifts the focus of the incident from an external attack to the group's own handling of security information. For a company whose business spans internet infrastructure and online services, how quickly and thoroughly it acts on vulnerability reports from within its own organization is central to customer trust. 日テレNEWS NNN reported that Kumagai apologized over damage to customer assets, and that experts had previously pointed to issues in the company's systems — findings the company now acknowledges it received.
What the executives said
At the briefing, Kumagai addressed the unauthorized access directly and offered an apology, according to NHKニュース. The broadcaster reported that he acknowledged the vulnerability pointed out by a subsidiary could not be applied to the operation of the company's services.
毎日新聞 reported that GMO apologized and that the company described its security measures as having been too slow. 日本経済新聞 reported that Kumagai said the subsidiary's warning was not acted upon, and that he apologized in connection with the unauthorized access problem.
ケータイ Watch reported that the company's representative apologized for the information leak, and that he also expressed regret over shortcomings in security and over the company's handling of social media. 日テレNEWS NNN reported that the GMO chief apologized over harm to customer assets and acknowledged that the company had received system-related criticism from experts.
A warning that did not reach operations
The central thread running through the coverage is the gap between the subsidiary's identification of a weakness and its use in protecting the services. NHKニュース framed the admission as a failure to translate the vulnerability finding into service operations, while 日本経済新聞 characterized the president's remarks as an acknowledgment that the subsidiary's warning went unused in the response to the unauthorized access.
The accounts from the outlets differ in emphasis but converge on the same point: the problem was known inside the group before it was addressed in the services themselves. The executives did not, in the reporting available, offer a detailed account of why the warning failed to change how the services were run.
Reaction beyond the technical failure
The briefing also touched on how the company communicated during the incident. ケータイ Watch reported that the president apologized for the company's handling of social media as well as for security deficiencies, indicating that the response under scrutiny extended past the breach itself to how GMO engaged with the public while the problem was unfolding.
日テレNEWS NNN's report adds that experts had raised concerns about the company's systems before the briefing, and that the company now accepts those points. That detail places the incident in a broader context of outside scrutiny that preceded the official acknowledgment.
What to watch
The reporting does not specify the scale of the data or asset damage, the number of customers affected, or what remedial steps GMO plans to take. What happens next will depend on whether the company details how the subsidiary's warning was handled internally and what changes it makes to ensure similar findings reach the teams running its services.
