Japanese Government Urgently Allocates 10 Billion Yen to Strengthen Cybersecurity

on November 6, according to Yonhap News Agency, the Japanese government decided at its cabinet meeting to utilize this year's contingency reserve fund to urgently allocate 10 billion yen (approximately 85 billion Korean won) to enhance cybersecurity measures. Of this amount, 4.1 billion yen will be used to strengthen the "Agile Cyber Defense" system that allows police to access attack servers and eliminate risk factors, 3.8 billion yen will be used to enhance the security of the Digital Agency's systems, and 2 billion yen will be used to utilize artificial intelligence to check for vulnerabilities in government and other systems.

Japanese Digital Minister Atsushi Matsumoto stated that there have been cases where AI discovered previously unknown vulnerabilities such as those in PHP, emphasizing the importance of using high-performance AI to scan systems and respond promptly before vulnerabilities are exploited. Cyberattack incidents have been frequent in Japan this year. According to the Personal Information Protection Commission, approximately 260 million copies of leaked personal information have been recorded since April, including duplicates; in July, the government intranet "Government Solutions Service" was illegally breached, leading to the leak of personal information belonging to over 246,000 civil servants; in September, hackers leaked 6.6 million records of personal information belonging to users of Japan's largest car-sharing company, Times Car, and the corporate cloud service system of SoftBank subsidiary IDC Frontier was hit by ransomware; last month, IT giant GMO Internet Group reported that hackers demanded a $1 million ransom.