Tata Electronics, the victim of a cyberattack that targeted data related to some of its biggest clients, has put in place steps to prevent such breaches in the future, based on recommendations by US cybersecurity firm Mandiant, people aware of the developments told ET.“Tata Electronics had hired Mandiant for the probe and found that unauthorised access to the network led to large-scale data exfiltration,” said one of them. “The findings of the investigation have been shared with their global clients and most of the corrective measures suggested by Mandiant have been implemented already.”The government has said it had found no evidence that critical information had been lost in the attack.ETtech
Reuters reported on June 22 that ransomware group World Leaks posted more than 200,000 files to the dark web, including details on projects related to some of the company’s global clients, which include Apple and Tesla. Three days later, it said that the company had launched a probe and had tightened internal security protocols.Also Read: ETtech Explainer: What the Tata Electronics hack exposed about Apple and TeslaTata Electronics also confirmed a “cybersecurity incident,” adding that its response protocols were deployed immediately. “The incident has had no impact on our operations across businesses, which remain unaffected,” it said in a statement at the time.Tata Electronics and Mandiant didn’t respond to ET’s queries.The company is strengthening the existing infrastructure and has expanded its collaboration with existing partners, said another person.“The company is closely working with partners like Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet to secure their systems against future vulnerabilities,” this person said. “The company has scaled rapidly in recent times and is looking to secure its systems with multiple partners that come in with expertise for different segments of the supply chain.”In cybersecurity, the supply chain refers to the network of external entities that interact with or have access to your digital systems, he said. These include software vendors, cloud service providers, managed IT providers, hardware suppliers, logistics partners, and even contractors.“Any organisation that handles a company’s data, integrates it with their infrastructure, or delivers any part of the services is a potential weak link and target for attackers,” the person said. “It creates indirect pathways into the business that threat actors can exploit. Securing this supply chain is crucial through multiple partners.”Athenian Tech CEO Kanishk Gaur said the breach demonstrated how modern cyberattacks have evolved beyond traditional ransomware into AI-enabled data extortion campaigns that leverage deception, social engineering, and increasingly target third-party suppliers to gain access to high value business ecosystems.“The compromise of engineering documents, manufacturing data, employee information, and customer-linked records highlights how a single supplier breach can create systemic risk across the global electronics and semiconductor supply chain,” he said.He added that executive protection monitoring, threat intelligence and hunting were key as threat actors were increasingly targeting senior executives through credential theft, impersonation, deepfakes, personal data exposure, and business email compromise to gain access to critical systems.World Leaks is a profit-driven extortion group that emerged in 2025. Its main modus operandi is centred around stealing corporate data, using the threat of public exposure to demand payment rather than completely relying on file encryption. Besides Tata Electronics, the group has also targeted other companies in sectors like business, manufacturing, healthcare and technology.The Tata Electronics cyber breach is being closely watched by the government. On Monday, IT secretary S Krishnan said the government had found no evidence of any critical loss of information in the recent cyber security incident. The data breach was also probed by the Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (Cert-In), he said.“We are studying what is happening on that issue. But on the commercial aspect, we understand that both the current entities involved are broadly satisfied that they have not lost anything... they are not very concerned about that. So, this is what we understand from those entities,” Krishnan added.
