During the last meeting held in Japan last may, G7’s head of state adopted a joint declaration about cybersecurity issues.
Representatives of the biggest 7 economies in the world stated that Internet is a key driver for global economy: openness, interoperability, reliability and security are the cornerstones of this vision, as well as the free flow of informations and protection of human rights on line.
How G7 countries are going to empower their principle declaration?
Firstly, cooperation between all the actors responsible for cybersecurity: governments. business, research and society as a whole.
Secondly, international law: according to the G7 governments it is applicable, including the United Nations Charter, in cyberspace. Furthermore, cyber activities could amount to the use of force or an armed attack within the meaning of the United Nations Charter and customary international law.
A new UN Group of Governamentals Experts (GGE), is expected to discuss more how existing international law can be applied to cyberspace.
Finally, G7 encourage more states to join the Budapest Conventionon Cybercrime and support the work done by the G7 Roma – Lyon Group’s high-tech Crime subgroup.
Even though cybersecurity is one the most important issue in the international agenda, G7 declaration sounds quite predictable without introducing any important innovation in policies.
JAPAN CYBERSECURITY STRATEGY
What’s the framework of the country, the third economy in the world?
As most of the cybersecurity strategies, Japan adopted a white paper. The first edition was released in 2013, while a second one in september, 2015.
The Japan Cybersecurity basic act focus on govenerment led and non government actors.
Japan Cert and National Center of Incindent REadiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity are the responsible for developing national cybersecurity policy and ensuing the security of different public sector organizations, to put forward proposals as well the Basic Cybersecurity act.
Public – private partnership is another pillar of this strategy.
Surprisingly, for a country like japan, there are weak points, too, according to a Deloitte’s Asia Pacific Defence outlook 2016.
Japan is an aging country, and its population is quite unaware of the risks of cybercrime: the system as whole is weak because people don’t behave properly in the net.
There few efforts to promote domestic expertise on cyber issues.
Cooperation is a problem, too, because admitting of being attacked a behavior socially unaccepted: frauds or cyberattack are hidden to the community.
Island mentality is another element: japanese believe no threats can hit them because they live on an island protected by the sea. Obviously, it’s not the case when we talk about cyber attacks.
To sum up, Japan is an high-value target for its economic and technology power, and its policies and its approach toward cyber issues doesn’t seem fitting.
