David Suzuki of Kikutora Special Risks discusses the cybersecurity landscape in Japan after a cyberattack on beverage giant Asahi Group. He warns that such events could become more frequent as generative AI becomes more widely adopted.

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Japan has experienced a notable increase in ransomware and cyberattacks, with experts attributing this trend to the rise of generative AI. Previously, language barriers made Japan a less frequent target, but AI tools now enable attackers to bypass these obstacles, leading to more frequent incidents.

While AI also offers new tools for cyber defense, the overall risk has grown, especially as Japan's long period of peace has led to a degree of complacency in cybersecurity. Both small businesses and major corporations are now vulnerable, and experts highlight the need for more centralized and robust cybersecurity policies to address the systemic risks posed by evolving cyber threats.

Rise in Japan cyberattacks exposes dark side of generative AI: Expert

There's been this rash of ransomware attacks on companies in Japan recently, it's a little out of the norm. Why is this happening? Do you have any sort of sense? Well, I think one thing is kind of the rise of generative AI, which has effectively broken the language barrier. I mean, previously, I think a lot of threat actor groups gave Japan lower priority because of the language barrier. But now with generative AI, language is not an issue. So I anticipate a spike, actually, even more than we're seeing now, increasing frequency of cyber attacks on Japanese companies. Well, so this is sort of the dark side of AI and shows that AI, much as it's vaunted, can be a double edged sword. Correct, yes. So basically, you know, what we're seeing here is, you know, AI lowers the barrier for attackers, you know, we've seen deep fakes, automated phishing, rapid malware iteration. But fortunately, it also empowers defenders with a nominally detection, predictive response and other capabilities. So the decisive factor is who integrates AI to their doctrine faster, the attackers or defenders. Dave, got to ask you, just a couple of seconds ago, we were showing viewers a graphic, the number of cyber attacks in Japan. I think this was for last year, all of last year, 2024. That's about 222 of them, which is up about by 12 cases, I think. What does this say about corporates in Japan and how cyber secure they are or not? Because, I mean, usually when you think about Japan, it's, you know, it's Blade Runner or Tokyo is at least, right, super high tech. But I mean, if these cases are happening with this kind of volume, what does it say? Well, I think, unfortunately, Japan has gone through a long period of, I shouldn't say unfortunately. Fortunately, Japan has been at peace for many decades, but that has made the general populace complacent. So no one thinks that they're going to be a victim of a cyber attack. However, the reality is Japan faces both targeted campaigns by state actors, cyber criminal groups and others. But there's also these spray and play attacks that probe any publicly facing IT service. So there's a lot of random attacks. And what this means is that anybody in Japan can be a victim. Nobody is safe. Everybody from mom and pop operations to global Japanese corporations are potential victims. So, you know, a store, a corner store can be a victim. Finance, global financial institutions can be a victim. Critical infrastructure can be attacked. You know, policy, cybersecurity policy in Japan is becoming more centralized, but there's still market fragmented oversight and uneven private sector defenses. And this all combines to create systemic risk.

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Rise in Japan cyberattacks exposes dark side of generative AI: Expert

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