Mitsubishi Electric Corporation said that it will establish the Product Security Incident Response Team (PSIRT) as a new company-wide framework dedicated to promptly and reliably responding to and reducing cybersecurity risks in products and related services in all divisions and branches. The team will begin working from April 1, 2019.

As the adoption of IoT continues to spread, the risk of products being exposed to cyber-attacks is rising. Companies that sell networked products are obliged to counter such vulnerabilities and responsibly disclose information if customers are ever impacted by such threats. Mitsubishi Electric's new PSIRT unit will create a company-wide framework for controlling and managing product security activities to help customers avoid serious damage or impact from cybersecurity risks.

PSIRT managers will be appointed in every business group headquarter and factory to oversee risk reduction and product security, with the PSIRT providing supervision from company headquarters. In addition to responding to product security vulnerability, the team will strengthen security-related technical efforts from the product development stage.

In June 2019, Mitsubishi Electric will launch a customer website dedicated to product security and aggregate vulnerability information. Also, a new inquiry desk will handle customer reports regarding security issues, separate from existing customer-support desks for individual products. By communicating promptly and appropriately with customers regarding product security matters, Japanese firm expects to strengthen customer confidence in the security of Mitsubishi Electric products and services.