Japans new Active Cyber Defense Bill a Dual Track Strategy

Japan’s new Active Cyber Defense Bill represents a shift in how nations approach cybersecurity—moving from purely defensive into more proactive threat mitigation. Of course it is not without criticism and concern given the new powers that these agencies hold with the potential for abuse.

This legislation has emerged from a reality check. When former U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair criticised Japan’s cybersecurity preparedness in 2022. It turns out this even event is now known as “Blair Shock”—it highlighted a critical gaps between Japan’s technological advancements and its cyber defense capabilities.

Japan at it’s core has constitutional privacy protections, particularly Article 21’s “communication secrecy provisions”, had unintentionally created blind spots that threat actors like the Chinese-backed MirrorFace group exploited for years, extracting national security secrets and advanced technology.

The refreshing take for me and what makes Japan’s approach noteworthy is its dual-track strategy.

The first track establishes defensive measures: cybersecurity councils, mandatory incident reporting for critical infrastructure operators, and enhanced information-gathering capabilities for the prime minister’s office. This is all grat to see.

But it’s the second track that breaks new ground for Japan — empowering a new set of law enforcement professionals know as “cyber harm prevention officers” to have new powers that allow them to proactively disrupt hostile servers during active attacks, sometimes without waiting for explicit approval when time is critical.

This shift toward active defense raises important questions for other nations grappling with similar challenges. How can countries balance constitutional protections with the need for rapid cyber response? Japan’s solution involves careful legal frameworks that allow monitoring of international communications passing through Japan while maintaining domestic privacy protections.

Regardless of what country you are from, for any organisation, Japan’s new bill offers several lessons I believe is critical for being prepared in the world we now find ourselves in where “cyber attacks” are an every day occurence.

The mandatory incident reporting requirements acknowledge something many security professionals already know—transparency about breaches, while initially uncomfortable, ultimately strengthens overall security posture. It creates a feedback loop that improves threat intelligence and response capabilities across all sectors.

The emphasis on rapid response capabilities also highlights the importance of operational readiness. Technical defenses alone aren’t sufficient when attackers can move faster than traditional approval processes allow. organisations need to develop clear escalation procedures, pre-authorised responses, and well-trained teams capable of making critical decisions under pressure.

This is precisely why structured preparedness exercises have become so valuable. At Veeam we have started a series of events to help organisations with this in particular, while being able to connect with industry peers. Our TTX tabletop exercises allows organisations to stress-test their decision-making processes against realistic attack scenarios. These simulations reveal gaps in communication protocols, unclear authority structures, and unrealistic assumptions about how quickly teams can coordinate during crises and even recovery time objectives. Similarly, our beConnected (formerly Inner Circle) executive sessions focus on similar scenarios but conversations often go into other challenges leaders face when cyber incidents escalate beyond purely technical concerns—how do you maintain business continuity while managing stakeholder communications, regulatory requirements, and potential legal implications?

In either of the event series above it also blended with real world ransomware data collected by Coveware by Veeam. This team of ransomware experts deal with ~1000 +/- cyber extortion events every single year and have been collecting data points on every incident. This gives organisations great insight into how these cyber groups operate, initial access trends and even encryption vs data exfiltration payment rates.

In simple terms, I feel that Japan’s new approach demonstrates that effective cyber defense requires both technological capabilities and “institutional readiness”. The creation of specialised law enforcement roles with unprecedented powers reflect a recognition that cybersecurity is as much an operational discipline requiring dedicated expertise and clear authority to act quickly.

For organisations looking to enhance their own cyber resilience, the Japanese model suggests several practical steps:

1. Establish clear incident response hierarchies with pre-authorised actions for common scenarios.
2. Implement regular cross-functional exercises that test coordination between technical and business teams
3. Develop robust threat intelligence capabilities that enable proactive rather than purely reactive responses.

If this sounds like you I suggest you reach out to your local Veeam representative and find out more on out TTX and beConnected series of events we hold globally. Out of these events it is a part to our 1:1 Cyber Resilience Workshops where we help organisations go deeper on this topic, by working through not only your technical environment but it’s a chance to bring your security and infrastructure teams together to hold joint planning so you can be as prepared as possible.

The goal isn’t just to have a response plan on paper, but to develop the muscle memory that enables rapid, coordinated action when an incident occurs.

I will finish with this - Japan’s Active Cyber Defense Bill ultimately reflects an evolution in cybersecurity thinking — from viewing cyber attacks as “IT problems” to recognising them as fundamental threats requiring a broad, organisation wide operational response.