A former U.S. State Department official says Japan should strengthen its relatively weak cybersecurity to remove a major barrier to increased American-Japanese defense cooperation.
While the two countries are already working together in several defense areas, including co-development of the Standard Missile-3 Block IIA missile defense interceptor and Japan’s planned purchase of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, many areas for cooperation remain untapped because the U.S. government and American defense contractors have low confidence in Japan’s overall ability to protect sensitive information, said Steve Ganyard, a former deputy assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs. 
“The single biggest impediment to the future of U.S.-Japan security relationship is Japan’s lack of overarching industrial and cybersecurity protocols,” Ganyard said Dec. 19 at a Hudson Institute event in Washington, D.C. “Japan must create the sort of confidence-building measures that the U.S. will appreciate,” such as strong authentication, device hardening and fewer attack surfaces.
While the United States beefed up its cyber defenses after Chinese hackers allegedly stole American weapon system information, cyber security in Japan remains “woefully underfunded” and has “balkanized authorities,” said Ganyard, now president of Avascent Global Advisors and a consultant to the Institute for Defense Analyses.
“The Japanese industry and Japanese government have not had the shocks to the system that the U.S. government has had that have forced the U.S. government into breaking down those stovepipes,” he said. “We face the same threat in the Pacific, so [Japan should] learn from us, learn from the painful lessons that we have, and it’s a lot easier and it’s a lot cheaper.”
James Armington, who oversees sales campaigns in Japan for Boeing‘s [BA] Defense, Space & Security segment, said potential areas for new or expanded U.S.-Japanese defense cooperation include advanced infrared search-and-track systems to detect small and stealthy targets; autonomous control systems to reduce the workload of warfighters; lightweight composite structures to increase durability and strength; and using “big data” to analyze and predict failure rates for weapon systems.