Strategic cooperation between North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and Japan gets stronger with each passing day. Japanese Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, on a recent trip to Estonia announced the country’s plan to join Tallinn, NATO’s Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence in order to improve cyber defense infrastructure.
Annually, the Estonia based Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence organizes Locked Shields, a cyber defense exercise, also globally claimed to be the biggest and most complex military drill in this department.
Many say this is Japan’s attempt to help reduce attacks on its own servers. In the past, Beijing has been being suspected of such attacks, but without any confirmation.
According to Japanese National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, Japan’s cyber networks specifically the devices which were linked with the IOT (Internet of Things), were the focus of about a billion cyber raids in the year 2016, with a majority of these attacks originating from China.
The Japanese government is concerned that its crucial infrastructure such as hydropower dams, power grid, nuclear plants, transportation systems and communication networks could be damaged by these cyberattacks.
The Japanese are also working on averting a potential cyber sabotage of the Tokyo Olympics which are to be held in 2020. But the prime concern for Japanese government is to protect the Self Defense Force’s facilities and arms systems.
This is a vital step as the leaders of the Euro Atlantic Partnership Council (EAPC) believe that the countries are now facing increasing threats from Russian, Chinese and North Korean cyber criminals, regardless of who they work for.
