What you can expect from the JNSA

It is my distinct pleasure to serve as the current chairman of the JNSA.

It has been a full six years since the JNSA began activities as a specified non-profit organization approved by the Cabinet Office in May 2001, and actually seven years have passed counting the organization's initial time as a voluntary association. During this period, the environment and awareness surrounding information security has undergone dramatic change. Attacks and incidents have gone beyond simple viruses and hacking, as we see more and more cases of financially motivated fraud preying on people and society. Information leakage has also become a major issue. Corporations collecting information during the course of their business and the individuals who own personal information are experiencing a new awareness of the risks involved.

As if a direct reflection of the activities of the JNSA, we find ourselves entering a period of practicality, where technological elements have come together to bring us forward out of a our early period of immaturity. As a result, issues related to operations management and social activities are being closely scrutinized. While internal controls continue to be an important topic, the initial objective is to conduct accounting in a manner that ensures transparency and guarantees equitable corporate management. In order to accomplish this, IT (information technology) must be a completely reliable tool given the fact that information security has come to be viewed as an important mechanism for fraud prevention.

When the JNSA was first established, the main approach was to define information security philosophies and policies for each individual IT element. More recently, however, developments in IT, forensics, PDCA, and other operational controls as measures for ensuring information security have meant that more importance is being placed on specifications such as ISO15408 and policies for the management of the system lifecycles. IT has become viewed more as just one of the many elements comprising information security.

The insight that these issues cannot be solved by technology alone, while at the same time policies cannot be created without the support of technology will never change, even though perceptions may change over time. The JNSA conducts activities reflecting a common awareness of issues among working organization members, and as a rule we make public the results of such activities as report deliverables. By creating a foundation of shared information, we believe that we help promote greater overall information security, leading to the formation of viable business markets.

The activities and results of the JNSA have gained increasing importance both domestically and internationally. I intend to do everything in my power for the development of JNSA and the security industry. I ask you for your continued support of our activities.

Sincerely,

Ryoichi Sasaki
Tokyo Denki University