Geopolitical risks are on the rise, including Russia's invasion of Ukraine and the escalation of the U.S.-China conflict. In corporate business activities, geopolitical risks tend to manifest themselves as economic security issues such as supply chain disruptions. In fact, cyber-attacks involving state actors are on the rise, targeting global companies, including Japanese companies, and causing serious damage.

In addition to this situation, the digitalization of the COVID-19 disaster is adding to cyber risks. Attackers' methods are becoming more diverse and sophisticated every day, and there are even groups of attackers that use cloud-based ransomware with a division of labor. Moreover, they are not limited to government agencies and large corporations. We are seeing many cases in the supply chain that target small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) with weak security. Cyber-attacks targeting individuals, such as phishing, also continue to occur.

In order to protect ourselves from such attacks, it is more important than ever that each and every one of us take the looming cyber threats as our own business and improve our cyber security awareness and literacy. Cyberspace is becoming a public space for socioeconomic activities, and ensuring reliable and free data distribution is an urgent issue. Corporate managers need to recognize this as an important management issue.

Bringing together a global team of leading cyber security experts from industry, government, and academia, Cyber Initiative Tokyo 2022 will delve into a wide variety of session topics: the international collaboration for economic security, the latest diversified cyber attacks and prevention methods, and trust data utilization for DX promotion, etc. We hope you can join us for how to create a digital society where everyone can live safely and securely.