GDPR training and awareness for employees and managers

Progressive digitization and networking not only bring many opportunities, but also increase the risks of cyber attacks and data leaks. A secure and resilient IT infrastructure is therefore essential for business success, regardless of the industry. The importance of data sovereignty and digital sovereignty has been brought home to many companies, not least by the "forced digitization" caused by the Covid 19 pandemic. Outsourcing, for example, has often made them overly dependent on U.S. cloud providers and they now have to look for alternatives after the EU-US Privacy Shield was declared invalid by the European Court of Justice (ECJ).

Making matters worse for Germany and Japan is the fact that the current generation of decision-makers and managers are not necessarily "digital natives," and therefore there is a risk that risks will not be properly assessed, insufficient measures will be taken, and the wrong investment decisions will be made. According to a recent OECD study, Japan has the lowest IT literacy among developed countries. This makes Japanese companies particularly vulnerable to social engineering, ransomware attacks via e-mail or fraudulent telephone calls (scam calls). Unfortunately, the situation in Germany is not necessarily any better in some cases.

Both the Japanese and German governments have now recognized this problem and launched numerous awareness and training measures. In particular, the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), the National Center of Incident Readiness and Strategy for Cybersecurity (NISC) established in 2014, the German Federal Office for Information Security (BSI), and the data protection supervisory authorities of the German states offer numerous handouts and training courses, not only for those responsible in business and politics or operators of critical infrastructures, but increasingly also for small and medium-sized enterprises.