PPP (Public-Private Partnership)-Based Cyber Resilience Enhancement Efforts for National Critical Infrastructures Protection in Japan

Abstract

Emerging vulnerability of the national critical infrastructures (CIs) against to the cyber risk including cyberattacks and unintentional large-scale information system or network failures have increased frequency and the scale of socioeconomic impacts to our society. As dependencies among critical infrastructures have increased rapidly, the impact of a single cyber incident at a certain critical infrastructure tends to spread very quickly and widely to external systems and networks in other critical infrastructures or areas through widely connected networks. Considering the situation, PPP (Public-Private Partnership) efforts between critical infrastructure service providers and responsible governmental agencies have become very important to protect critical infrastructures from cyber risks. Based on this recognition, PPP-based cybersecurity exercises for critical infrastructure protection (CIP) have been executed for the last decade in Japan. This paper summarizes the over 10 years joint efforts of the Japanese government and critical infrastructure service providers and discusses the lessons learned and challenges to be shared with other countries to collaborate in the cybersecurity field.