US Global Cyber Alliance stages inaugural strategic committee

US Global Cyber Alliance stages inaugural strategic committee

international   20:59:00

The Global Cyber Alliance has held its first Strategic Advisory Committee meeting on 18 March at New York's Federal Reserve Bank. The SAC - which comprises senior execs from the public and private sectors - is chaired by GCA's three founding partners: New York County district attorney Cyrus R. Vance, London police commissioner Ian Dyson, and chair of the Center for Internet Security John Gilligan. 

The GCA said its mission is to identify systemic cyber risks where significant progress can be made on risk mitigation, and then to bring together the people and resources to source and enact a solution and to gauge the effect. "The outcome of this effort is not a report with recommendations but actual risk reduction moving forward on a path to eradicate a systemic cyber risk," it added.

The Alliance will regularly assess the main cyber risks deemed by the collective community to be significant threats to the global online community and for which "GCA can have a measurable, positive impact on the eradication of the risk."

During the Strategic Advisory Committee meeting, it presented several key systemic risks to consider combatting - using dedicated task groups focused on implementation. These included phishing,

risks arising from weak identity and authentication mechanisms, risks arising from vulnerable and compromised websites, and Distributed Denial of Service attacks.

Japan moves to increase cyber security posture ahead of 2020 Olympics

Japan moves to increase cyber security posture ahead of 2020 Olympics

international   15:56:00

Japan's Parliament has enacted legislation to boost the number of specialists with skills to combat cyber attacks in the lead-up to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.

Under the revised cyber security legislation, a new national qualification for those who “support work to ensure security in information processing” will be set up, with the government announcing plans for a qualification exam to come on stream by 2017.  The government said it hoped that more than 30,000 specialists will have passed the exam by 2020.

The move comes amid rapidly growing cyber attacks in Japan. A record 54.51 billion such attacks were detected in the country in 2015, double the number from the previous year, according to a survey by a government-backed institute.

The legislation will also widen the scope of entities subject to vulnerability checks, following a massive leak of personal data from the Japan Pension Service in 2015.