What It Is

NIS2, officially Directive (EU) 2022/2555, is an EU regulation expanding the original NIS Directive. It establishes a high common level of cybersecurity resilience for critical infrastructure and digital services across member states. Using a risk-based approach, it targets essential and important entities via size-cap rules (e.g., 50+ employees or €10M turnover).

Key Components

• **Four pillarsrisk management, incident reporting, business continuity, corporate accountability.
• Strict timelines: 24-hour early warnings, 72-hour notifications, one-month final reports.
• Mandates supply chain security, access controls, encryption.
• Built on standards like ISO 27001, NIST CSF; no formal certification but national enforcement with spot checks.

Why Organizations Use It

Legal compliance avoids fines up to 2% global turnover. Enhances resilience against threats, builds stakeholder trust, ensures business continuity. Provides competitive edge in regulated sectors like energy, transport.

Implementation Overview

Proactive gap analysis, risk assessments, policy updates for medium/large entities in covered sectors (EU-wide). Key activities: training, vendor audits, incident procedures. Varies by member state post-October 2024 transposition; 12-18 months typical.

What It Is

The Act on the Protection of Personal Information (APPI) is Japan's cornerstone regulation for handling personal data, enacted in 2003 with key 2022 amendments. It protects privacy rights while balancing data utility in the digital economy, applying a risk-based approach emphasizing consent, security, and purpose limitation. Scope covers businesses handling identifiable data of Japanese residents, including extraterritorial reach.

Key Components

• Core principles: transparency, purpose limitation, minimization, data subject rights, safeguards
• Explicit consent for sensitive data (e.g., medical, race) and cross-border transfers
• Pseudonymously processed information for analytics flexibility
• PPC enforcement with ¥100M fines; no fixed controls, but layered security (systematic, human, physical, technical)

Why Organizations Use It

• Mandatory compliance avoids fines, breaches, reputational harm
• Builds trust (78% consumers prefer compliant brands), enables EU adequacy transfers
• Delivers ROI: 20-30% efficiency gains, market access, innovation acceleration

Implementation Overview

• 5-phase framework: gap analysis, governance, controls, testing, monitoring (12-24 months)
• All sizes/industries targeting Japan; PPC audits, voluntary P Mark certification