On December 12, 2018 The Global Cybersecurity Day 2018 was held at Loeb House, Harvard University, by Boston Global Forum (BGF) and Michael Dukakis Institute (MDI). In the event, MDI owned the honor to have Japanese Minister for Foreign Affairs Taro Kono as a guest speaker.
Taro Kono is a Japanese politician belonging to the Liberal Democratic Party. He is a member of the House of Representatives, and has served as Minister for Foreign Affairs since a Cabinet re-shuffle by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on 3 August 2017.
Despite his absence at Loeb House, he delivered his speech virtually to the audiences. Mr. Taro Kono congratulated the Boston Global Forum for their achievement and was excited about the Global Cybersecurity Day this year. In addition, he gave his opinion on the current situation; with a lot of changes bring about benefits as well as threats of emerging technologies especially in term of cybersecurity.
In his speech, he emphasized the need of ethical standards in technology innovation. If ethics are not prioritized, it might lead to unexpected loss to the economy and the whole society since the technology itself can be misused for malicious purposes by bad actors. Minister Taro Kono mentioned that Japan is placing cybersecurity as one of its top priorities to protect safe trade and transfer on cyberspace. He hopes to join a global effort in protecting people’s safety on cyberspace.
