Mitsubishi Heavy Industries signs Cooperation Agreement to join Charter of Trust for Cybersecurity

Tokyo, April 23, 2019 - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (MHI) today signed a Cooperation Agreement regarding participation in the Charter of Trust on Cybersecurity at the Charter of Trust Roadshow in Tokyo. This agreement follows the signing of the LOI on February 19. This will make MHI the first Asian member company as the 17th partner in the Global Cyber Security Initiative.

"We are honored to be invited by Siemens and the other signatories to join the Charter of Trust for Cybersecurity", said Eisaku Ito, CoCTO of MHI. "Cybersecurity is an important field for MHI and its group companies. MHI is a Japanese company, but also a global company with customers and partners around the world. Our participation in the Charter of Trust is part of our commitment to our global customers and partners, and we hope that this occasion will help to promote the 10 key principles advocated by the Charter of Trust, and that the Charter of Trust initiative will contribute to greater globalization."

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 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 cybersecurity in 2018 caused 500 billion euros 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. The figure is expected to rise to 20.4 billion by 2020.