Ahead of 1 October, when the government will be able to activate active cyber defense, the Prime Minister’s Office’s National Cyber Coordination Office was established with approximately 240 staff and a ¥10.7 billion budget, but attacks on Japanese companies did not stop.
As cyberattacks intensify worldwide, personal data breaches involving Japanese companies have continued, and the aggregate total of disclosures announced since September is said to exceed 300 million people worldwide. Japan is attracting particularly high levels of concern because of the scale and frequency of its data breaches.
The government established the National Cyber Coordination Office (NCO) within the Prime Minister’s Office to consolidate cyber measures, assigning approximately 240 staff under a Cabinet cyber official at the level of an administrative vice-minister, and doubled its budget to ¥10.7 billion. The NCO established a system for active cyber defense that gathers and analyzes intelligence to detect signs of attacks at an early stage, then works with police and Self-Defense Forces units to access attackers’ servers and neutralize them.
Active cyber defense was expected to become available from 1 October this year, the law’s effective date, but reports indicate that the government and NCO are scrambling on the ground. Attacks on companies continued immediately before and after that date, and uncertainty remains over the effectiveness of the measures.