Mitsubishi Heavy Industries signs LoI to join Charter of Trust for cybersecurity

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) signed a letter of intent to join the Charter of Trust for cybersecurity in Tokyo today, expanding the Charter's reach into Asia. The company's membership is expected to be finalized by the end of September 2019. As the 17th Charter partner, MHI will be the first Asian company to join the global cybersecurity initiative.

"Cybersecurity is the key enabler for a successful implementation of the Internet of Things, as well as for protecting critical infrastructure," said Joe Kaeser, President, and CEO of Siemens. "And cybersecurity 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 honored to be invited by Siemens and the other signatories to join the Charter of Trust for cybersecurity," said Shunichi Miyanaga, President, and CEO of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. "Cybersecurity 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 cybersecurity and further advance digitalization. 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 and TÜV Süd signed the Charter. On February 15, 2019, the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), the CCN National Cryptologic Center of Spain and the Graz University of Technology in Austria joined as associate members. Charter of Trust member companies has also worked out baseline requirements to make digital supply chains more secure. The partners recently announced that they would be implementing 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 cybersecurity in 2018 caused €500 billion in losses worldwide. And threats to cybersecurity are constantly on the rise as the world digitalizes further: according to Gartner, 8.4 billion networked devices were in use in 2017 – 31 percent more than in 2016. This figure is expected to rise to 20.4 billion by 2020.