The National Police Agency said Thursday it would establish a cyberbureau as part of its reorganization in April 2022, aiming to improve capabilities to respond to large-scale cyber-attacks targeting critical national infrastructure.
The agency will also set up its own cyber-investigation unit within the next year. It will submit a bill to revise the police law to an ordinary Diet session next year.
Cyber-attacks have worsened globally. A cyberstrike last month forced one of the largest oil pipeline systems in the United States to shut down.
In Japan, prefectural police currently handle cyber-attacks, but the central government deemed it necessary to take the initiative in the field. In such countries as the United States and Britain, government agencies are in charge of cyber-investigations, and Japan aims to strengthen cooperation with those authorities overseas.
The NPA currently has five bureaus -- Criminal Affairs, Security, Community Safety, Traffic and Info-Communications -- on top of the Commissioner General's Secretariat, which handles personnel affairs and accounting.
The cyberbureau will be formed by reorganizing the Info-Communications Bureau.
The bureau has steadily increased its presence over the years. Established in 1954 when it was called the communication department, the Info-Communications Bureau has maintained communications networks within the police and, with the spread of the internet in the late 1990s, is also in charge of advanced analysis of cybercrimes.
However, similar sections that gather cybercrime information and support investigations already exist in the Security and Community Safety bureaus as well, and coordination between the agencies has been an issue.
In the reorganization next year, cybercrime tasks handled in those two bureaus will be transferred to the new cyberbureau, which will comprise about 200 officials who analyze the latest malware and supervise investigations conducted by prefectural police.
In another move, the NPA's investigative unit will be set up in the Kanto Regional Police Bureau. About 200 personnel with investigative experience and expertise will be recruited from all over the country. Except for the Imperial Guard, the new unit will be the first postwar organization within the police administration-specified NPA to have investigative powers, including the ability to make arrests.
The bureau will be responsible for covering cases involving critical infrastructure such as power plants and airports, areas prefectural governments struggle with. It will also cover synchronized attacks, such as e-commerce fraud, like the cybercrime that occurred last year at NTT Docomo Inc. when its e-money service was infiltrated to illegally withdraw money from bank accounts nationwide.
The NPA said it detected an average of 6,506 suspicious communications per day in 2020, up 55% from the previous year. The Metropolitan Police Department's investigation determined that Chinese military personnel were involved in some of the cyberattacks launched between 2016 and 2017 targeting about 200 defense and space organizations, including the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.
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