Government Draws Up Emergency Cybersecurity Package After Personal Data Leaks

The Japanese government announced an emergency package of measures at a ministerial meeting attended by Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and others, in response to recent personal data leaks caused by unauthorized access. The measures are built on four pillars: strengthening basic security using AI, improving information collection and analysis capabilities, strategizing attack responses, and supporting victims while preventing secondary harm.

Concrete measures include promoting systems that use AI to discover and assess system vulnerabilities, establishing a "Top Gun" team composed of highly skilled personnel from government and the private sector, and creating a public-private "Rescue Team" to provide initial support to affected companies. The plan also calls for strengthening "active cyber defense" that takes preemptive steps against servers used by attackers, noting that this has been made possible by a law enacted in October.

The measures were developed in light of a series of high-profile data leakage incidents, including ransomware-style attacks demanding ransom from GMO Internet Group. The government also states that, for incidents that could have serious impacts on national security, it will dispatch support teams made up of personnel from the Cabinet Cybersecurity Office, the National Police Agency, the Ministry of Defense, and other relevant agencies.

On the funding side, the government decided to allocate ¥10 billion from the 2026 contingency budget to update police information-gathering and analysis equipment, among other needs. The government said it aims to build "world-leading" resilience by sharing information across the public and private sectors so affected parties can recover quickly from incidents.