Japan has set a goal of more than tripling its domestic cybersecurity industry sales in the next decade, from the current ¥900 billion ($6 billion) to ¥3 trillion.

Japan-made cybersecurity products occupy less than half of the nation’s domestic market share at the moment, according to the government’s first industrial strategy on cybersecurity released by the economy ministry on Wednesday.

Expanding the domestic cybersecurity industry would enable security products and services to be better suited to domestic needs, making it strategically important for national security, the ministry said.

The new strategy aims to address the high barrier preventing domestic startups from entering the market. For example, the ministry noted the trend among corporate clients is to prioritize established track records, such as government agencies and major companies, and pricing over technological aspects when choosing what security products to buy.

Emerging cybersecurity producers have limited track records, making market entry difficult, which, in turn, means limited funding for them in developing new products and businesses, according to the ministry.

The government will start prioritizing promising domestic products in its procurement over the next three years, as well as establishing a list identifying promising domestic cybersecurity startups to give them better traction.

The new strategy also includes a ¥30 billion pledge of investment in the research and development of new technologies, with frameworks in place such as product competition among cybersecurity companies with cash rewards.

For particularly promising technologies, the government will provide necessary data for research and product development, as well as dispatching specialized personnel to foster product commercialization. The strategy will also focus on supporting personnel development and domestic companies’ overseas expansion.

The number of cyberattacks targeting Japan has been rising in recent years. Cyberattack-related network packets, a unit of data, observed in 2024 jumped 11% to 686.2 billion packets from a year earlier, according to the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology. The figure is more than 28 times the number observed in 2014.

An increasing number of cyberattacks targeting Japanese companies took place around the New Year’s period, which caused system malfunctions at Japan Airlines and multiple megabanks.

The Cabinet in February approved bills on “active” cyber defense, which would allow the government to acquire information from both the public and private sectors to identify sources of potential cyberattacks, then neutralize any threats to critical national infrastructure. The bills are currently pending parliament approval.

“We believe that improving our capabilities to respond to cyberattacks is an increasingly urgent issue, given the current security environment,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters in February.