Japan’s Annual Financial Services Cyber Security Drill
Delta Wall VII, the cybersecurity drill for Japan’s financial services industry, commenced today, running until October 27, with approximately 160 participants.
The State of Cyber Security in the Financial Sector
- Large-scale cyber attacks are occurring around the world, and attack methods are becoming more sophisticated and complex.
- In Japan, cyber-attacks have caused damage to business operations, theft of important information, and financial losses.
- The threat of cyber-attacks poses a major risk to the stability of the financial system, and it is essential to further improve the incident response capabilities of the financial industry as a whole.
Overview of previous exercises
The exercise has been conducted six times in the past.
- In FY2016, 77 institutions with a total of approximately 900 individuals participated
- In FY2017, 101 institutions & 1,400 individuals
- In FY2018, 105 institutions & 1,400 individuals
- In FY2019, 121 institutions & 2,000 individuals
- In 2020, 114 institutions & 1,700 individuals
- In 2021, 150 institutions & 2,700 individuals
Many of the participating financial institutions have reviewed or plan to review their processes and procedures, and have also taken or plan to take measures to strengthen information coordination internally and with external organizations, thereby improving their response systems.
Delta Wall VII
In October 2022, the Financial Services Agency (FSA) sponsors the seventh “Financial Industry-Wide Cyber Security Exercise” (Delta Wall VII). The name “Delta Wall” is meant to represent the three perspectives of “self-help,” “mutual aid,” and “public assistance,” which are key to cyber security measures (Delta) + defense (Wall).
In order to increase the participation rate, the number of participating securities companies and fund transfer agents was expanded to approximately 160.
Continuing from last year, participating financial institutions take part in the exercise in an actual telework environment in order to improve their ability to respond to incidents in a telework environment. They are required to submit self-analysis results of items that they were unable to respond to, and the effectiveness of the exercise will be enhanced by clarifying the factors in the evaluation.
Scope of Delta Wall VII
- Confirm the continuity of operations, including initial response, customer response, recovery response, etc., including investigation of the nature of the attack, including technical response in the event of an incident.
- Implemented in a workplace participation style so that management and many related departments (systems, public relations, planning, etc.) can participate.
- Emphasis on post-evaluation, including specific improvement measures and good practices, so that participating financial institutions can improve their response capabilities while repeating the PDCA cycle.
- The results of this exercise will be fed back to the industry as a whole, not just to the participating financial institutions.
Exercises by Sub-Industry
- Banks: not disclosed due to blind method
- Shinkin banks, credit unions, labor unions: leakage of customer information and website malfunctions
- Securities, FX, money transfer agents: issuers of prepaid means of payment; business system outages triggered by network equipment malfunctions
- Crypto exchanges: crypto asset outflow triggered by information leakage
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