Collaboration between NL and Japan on Critical Infrastructure Protection

On 17 June, over 120 professionals from Japan and the Netherlands joined for a webinar to discuss the current threat landscape and the opportunities of new technologies for the protection of critical infrastructures and to further strengthen the ties between both countries in this field. In the last years, a Partners for International Business Consortium, led by the NL embassy in Tokyo, The Hague Security Delta, and RVO, has led to among others co-developed solutions together with Japanese partners.

The webinar was opened by the Ambassador of The Netherlands in Japan, Peter van der Vliet, and Joris den Bruinen, Director of HSD. In his opening, Van der Vliet mentioned: “The exchange of cutting-edge technologies and knowledge is key for our bilateral collaboration. Cybersecurity is one of those cutting-edge technologies.” 

Explaining the current cyber threats and by discussing solutions coming from new technologies such as A.I. 

Alberto Pelliccione, CEO of ReaQta, stated that “in absence of prior knowledge about an attacker (no intelligence, lack of indicators), detections must be automated to speed-up the discovery and initiate granular tracking on all the affected devices.”

The threat landscape and COVID-19 challenges
Next to new technologies and cybersecurity, the participants also discussed how to implement technology in the battle against COVID-19 and to prevent the cyber-attacks that come with it. The unfortunate pandemic has triggered an increase in cyber threats on critical infrastructures. Governments and businesses are working hard to secure those infrastructures, mitigate risks, and adapt to the challenges of Covid-19. New challenges and opportunities come forth from the new normal as experts in the field of cybersecurity and critical infrastructures cope with an increase in threats on the critical infrastructures of our nations. The energy and power network, hospitals, telco networks, the financial sector all require secure and strong cybersecurity protection for the resilience of our nations.

 “Protecting company’s brand and supply chain partners need the active disclosure of cyberattack in POST-COVID-19 era.”, said Hiroshi Sasaki, Senior Security Advisor of McAfee.

Knowledge Summit at Tokyo 2021 Olympics

Depending on the developments of the COVID-19 pandemic, the PIB consortium will organise a Knowledge Summit in 2021 at the Tokyo Olympics. Please follow HSD and NL embassy social media channels for updates.

In case you’ve missed the webinar, you can watch the recording below.

The Powerpoint slides can be downloaded here: webinar-_critical_Infrastructure_Protection.pdf