Bridgestone Americas cyberattack disrupts North American tyre manufacturing

On 2 September 2026, Bridgestone Americas — the North American arm of the Japanese tyre and rubber giant Bridgestone Corporation — confirmed that it was investigating a cyberattack that had disrupted operations at some of its manufacturing facilities. The earliest disruption was reported at two production plants in Aiken County, South Carolina, where workers were sent home, and Canadian outlets soon reported a comparable interruption at Bridgestone's retreading and manufacturing site in Joliette, Quebec.

Bridgestone Americas, which runs roughly 50 production facilities across North America and employs about 55,000 people, described the event as a "limited cyber incident" and said it remained confident that it had contained the intrusion at an early stage. The company stated that it did not believe any customer data or customer-facing interfaces were compromised, and that the effect was confined to the operation of some plants rather than a broad network breach.

No group claimed responsibility

As of the initial disclosures, no ransomware or extortion group had publicly claimed the attack, and Bridgestone did not attribute it to any actor. The company had previously suffered a LockBit ransomware attack in 2022 that leaked internal data, giving the 2026 disruption an uncomfortable echo, but Bridgestone drew no link between the two events.

Bridgestone said it moved quickly to isolate affected systems, engaged external cybersecurity specialists, and worked to restore connectivity between the impacted plants and its central computer network. Within days it reported that it had begun ramping production back up toward pre-incident output. Because the intrusion was caught early, appeared confined to manufacturing operations, and produced no confirmed data theft, the incident's status was assessed as contained.