Our Inaugural PlanetGuardians Project

Planetway Corporation (Headquarters: California, Representative: Noriaki Hirao, Planetway) will partner with CompTIA’s Japan office (Headquarters: Illinois, USA) who provide IT certifications to more than 100 countries and regions worldwide. We plan to jointly promote IT security training through educational institutions through the CompTIA scholarship program lead by Dennis Kwok of CompTIA’s Japan Branch Office.

From September 2018, we will begin working in cooperation with CompTIA and companies participating in this program through Planetway Japan K.K., our Japanese branch office.

Background

Despite the fact that many companies are working to improve security measures in Japan recently, incidents of security infringement are increasing every year. Additionally, in 2014, IPA’s Basic Research on Increasing the Number of Information Security Professionals (additional analysis) reported a shortfall of 80,000 security professionals. Moreover, a survey by the Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry from 2017 predicted that shortfall to increase to 193,000 – so not only does this present a problem in the short term but demand also seems set to increase over time.

Since cyber security measures as social infrastructure now seem essential, the new Cyber Security Strategy (draft) from the Cabinet Office cited an increase in the number of security professionals through training as one of the priority measures. In addition, the Action Plan for Strengthening Industrial Cyber ​​Security published by the Ministry of Economy, Trade & Industry promotes cooperation between academic experts and promotes training for education providers. Although strategies to solve the shortfall in security professionals are being planned and implemented, there is still a lot of work to be done in this area.

In response to this, Planetway announced its new business PlanetGuardians in May 2018 which harnesses the talents of white hacker and information security experts who have previously worked in security advisory roles to such organisations as NATO, international security agencies and international police agencies, and has been developing information security programs in collaboration with them.

In parallel to this, CompTIA actively utilizes cooperation between educational institutions and external bodies to ensure that there is an ongoing and continuous ramping-up in the training and support of information security professionals and to fight the lack of good quality information security education provision as it currently stands.

In a statement Planetway has said about CompTIA and its participating companies that, "Responding to the shortage of security personnel through government policy alone, it will be difficult to meet the rate and number at which talented personnel are required, and any measures that can be handled by the private sector should be implemented in tandem. We agree with the idea that students need to have adequate security skills as they enter their professional careers in order to bear the brunt of increasing cyber security concerns now and into the future, and this collaboration goes some way to realising this goal.

Collaboration

Participating companies, including CompTIA and Planetway, will work with the about 150 universities and vocational schools that wish to provide security education registered in the CAPP Academy Program that CompTIA provides free of charge. Through this we plan to offer these programs to about 500 people in fiscal 2018.

Noriaki Hirao, CEO & Founder of Planetway, says: "As technology continues to evolve, it is impossible to ensure security 100% through the power of technology alone, so if we can train and deploy white hackers with advanced security knowledge this can act as a second line of defence. In this inaugural PlanetGuardians initiative that Planetway has been working hard to prepare for, and in collaboration with our global IT skills development partner CompTIA, it’s with great pleasure that I confirm our first step on the road to making Japan’s information security labour market more robust.

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About Planetway

Planetway is a startup that develops a data access platform, PlanetCross, which is based on technology supporting the Estonian e-government. Planetway believes that “the right to information and privacy should belong to individuals, not enterprises and organizations.” Our mission is for a “Human-centric and Secure Planet.” We promote the publication and utilization of personal data, on the condition that permission is granted by the individual.

Corporate website (Japanese): https://planetway.com/ Official Facebook page (Japanese): https://www.facebook.com/pwlvc/

About PlanetGuardians

PlanetGuardians is a global standard white hacker and security personnel development program developed by global cyber security engineers / trainers / advisors from NATO cyber terrorism defense center, international intelligence agencies, international police agencies.

About CompTIA

In 1982, to bring about the standardisation of specific areas within IT, vendors and partner companies set up an organisation in Chicago to provide the global IT industry with a place to hold an open dialogue. In 1990, its name was changed to CompTIA (the Computing Technology Industry Association) to better reflect the activities of the IT industry. It then expanded to open 10 branches centered around Europe and the United States, and established its CompTIA Japan Branch in April 2001. As of 2018, CompTIA has formed partnerships with more than 2,000 member companies, 3,000 or more school agencies, training-related companies, mainly in the ICT industry, and operates a community of more than 10,000 IT professionals. Through its industry association status it provides education to promote the prosperity of IT companies and professionals around the world and contributes to the success and development of IT hardware and software products and services. Its CompTIA certification serves as the basis for this, working closely with the IT industry to ensure that it meets the demands of the real world and contributes to the good of society.

About the CAPP Academy Program

Over the years CompTIA has provided its CAPP Academy Program for educational institutions in various countries around the world free of charge, among which Japan is one with 57 domestic universities and technical colleges. We support a variety of IT skills such as hardware, software, network and security for students and trainees. Specifically in Japan, the initiative aims to strengthen cooperation between industry and academia through support of education with the launch of the CompTIA Scholarship Program in May 2018 being rolled out to existing affiliate members.