LOI signed to join Charter of Trust for Cybersecurity

19th February 2019

Mitsubishi

Alex Lynn

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It has been announced that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) signed a letter of intent to join the Charter of Trust for Cybersecurity in Tokyo, expanding the Charter's reach into Asia. The membership is expected to be concluded by the end of September, 2019. As the 17th Charter partner, MHI will be the first Asian company to become a member of the global cyber security initiative.

"Cyber security is the key enabler for a successful implementation of the Internet of Things, as well as protecting critical infrastructure", said Joe Kaeser, President and CEO of Siemens. "And cyber security also knows no boundaries. That's why we highly appreciate Mitsubishi Heavy Industries joining us as the first big Asian company, making the digital world more trustworthy and secure. This will make our joint initiative even more global."

"We are honoured to be invited by Siemens and the other signatories to join the Charter of Trust for Cyber security", said Shunichi Miyanaga, President and CEO of MHI. "Cyber security is a focal area for MHI, and we continue to place importance on developing next-generation solutions in this area. We hope to contribute to making this effort more global."

The Charter of Trust was initially announced at the Munich Security Conference in 2018. Initiated by Siemens, it calls for binding rules and standards to build trust in cyber security and further advance digitalisation. In addition to Siemens and the Munich Security Conference, the companies AES, Airbus, Allianz, Atos, Cisco, Daimler, Dell Technologies, Deutsche Telekom, Enel, IBM, NXP, SGS, Total signed the Charter.

On February 15th, 2019, the BSI German Federal Office for Information Security, the CCN National Cryptologic Center of Spain and the Graz University of Technology in Austria joined as associate members. Charter of Trust member companies have also worked out baseline requirements to make digital supply chains more secure. The partners recently announced to implement these requirements in their own supply chains.

These are important steps - especially in view of the increasing global risks. According to the Center for Strategic and International Studies, threats to cyber security in 2018 caused €500bn in losses worldwide. And threats to cyber security are constantly on the rise as the world digitalises further: according to Gartner, 8.4 billion networked devices were in use in 2017 – 31% more than in 2016. The figure is expected to rise to 20.4 billion by 2020.