In wake of hacking scandals, Japan’s NTT partners with Box for enterprise security

Box CEO Aaron Levie (second from left) with representatives from NTT Com.

Speaking at a press conference in Tokyo today, the CEOs of NTT Communications (NTT Com) and Silicon Valley-based Box jointly unveiled “Box over VPN,” a new service that will combine NTT Com’s secure enterprise network and Box’s cloud-based collaboration and content management platform. Box over VPN promises to increase digital security for enterprise customers by sending data though its proprietary Arcstar Universal One private network, thus avoiding the public internet.

While such enterprise-facing VPN services are commonly deployed elsewhere, Japanese corporations and the government lag far behind in adopting modern IT security protocols – and it shows.

Data thefts

Last summer, educational services giant Benesse became the victim of Japan’s largest-ever data theft when a contractor copied and sold the names, addresses, and other personal information of nearly 29 million individual clients – many of them children – to a third party. In the wake of that incident, Economy, Trade, and Industry Minister Yuko Obuchi last September said that only 27 percent of Japanese corporations have executives in charge of promoting IT security, compared to 59 percent in foreign firms.

The country’s lax IT security was highlighted again this month when the Japan Pension Service admitted that a hack had compromised personal information associated with 1.25 million accounts. Mismanaged pension records were the root cause of a 2007 election defeat for Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party and led to current prime minister Shinzo Abe’s resignation during his first term. The latest scandal could send similar shockwaves through the political establishment, which has already pledged to hire more white-hat hackers.

“There are a lot of legacy business processes [in Japan], legacy IT, a legacy culture around it,” Box co-founder and CEO Aaron Levie told members of the press. “But there are all new security threats […] Legacy software won’t work for companies that want to go digital. Instead of security as an afterthought, it has to be baked in.”

NTT Com will be the sole provider of Box over VPN in Japan and the first distributor of the service elsewhere in Asia, though an NTT Com spokesperson declined to specify to Tech in Asia which markets were being targeted. Arcstar Universal One, the foundation of the new service, is available worldwide.

Box over VPN will cost between JPY 2,400 (US$19) per month per ID and 4,980 (US$40) per month per ID depending on which plan a client chooses. The spokesperson added that it will launch before the end of the year, likely in November.