Government holds urgent cybersecurity meeting in response to recent data breaches
The meeting on Monday evening discussed countermeasures following a request from GMO Internet Group for the government to take action.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi convened a ministerial meeting on cybersecurity on Monday evening to address data breaches that have impacted millions of personal information and caused financial losses. The meeting included Takaichi, Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara, digital minister Toshiharu Furukawa, and other relevant ministers.
This action came after GMO Internet Group requested the government to take active cyberdefense measures following a hacking incident that compromised its servers. At a press conference, Kihara was cautious about commenting on individual attacks, stating that the government would provide necessary support and take appropriate measures based on each case.
The police, Defense Ministry, and Self-Defense Forces would determine whether to implement access-neutralization measures, which involve infiltrating an attacker's server to neutralize it. GMO Internet Group reported that a security breach potentially affected 26,739 servers, involving customers' trading accounts at over 70 Japanese and overseas businesses.
Some users of the company's foreign exchange margin trading service have already suffered more than a million yen in losses due to unauthorized transactions from their accounts. GMO CEO Masatoshi Kumagai apologized for the breach and pledged to compensate victims, in addition to a uniform ¥5,000 payout to all users. Kumagai called for the government's assistance in deploying active cyberdefense measures and urged the government to take action based on the Active Cyber Defense Act, which only came into force on October 1 of the same year.
The law aims to bring Japan's cybersecurity infrastructure to a level comparable to or higher than that of Western countries. Despite opposition from critics, Kumagai acknowledged the government's prerogative in determining when and how to intervene, emphasizing that dismissing the request as a private-sector incident could eventually threaten all social infrastructure and personal assets.
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