By Franz-Stefan Gady
Japan is trying to battle cyber attacks through increased international cooperation.
According to the National Institute of Information Communications Technology (NICT), Japan experienced more than than 25 billion cyberattacks in 2014, with 40 percent of them traced back to China, followed by South Korea, Russia, and the United States. More than 25.66 billion attempts to compromise systems were recorded by the NICT, a figure that also included attacks aimed at testing the vulnerability of software used in servers, according to Kyodo News. Without vulnerability testings, the number is around 12.8 billion, according to the Japan Times. This continues a general upward trend in the number of cyber attacks - in 2005, just 310 million attempts were recorded – which are an increasing concern for Japanese policy makers. Their answer: more international dialogue on how to best deal with this burgeoning issue.
As I pointed out before, Japan continues to expand its network of partners across the world to find means to jointly combat cyber attacks. The year 2014 in particular saw an increased push by Japan to forge closer ties with like-minded countries in cyberspace. For example, on the multilateral level, in November 2014, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott, and President Barack Obama met in Brisbane, Australia, during the G20 Leaders’ Summit pledging their “their firm commitment to deepen the already strong security and defense cooperation” especially in cyber capacity building.
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