If you are interested in brushing up your Japanese and learning more about information security, I recommend taking the Information Security Management Examination (情報セキュリティマネッジメント試験, often abbreviated as SG).
The exam is administered by the Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan (IPA, 情報処理推進機構), which belongs to the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI).
The exam is multiple choice, consists of 60 questions and lasts for 2 hours. The first part of the exam covers the basic knowledge, and the second half has you solve a few longer ISMS related problems.
For example, you might be asked to help set up a ISMS in a company and determine risk levels for information assets.
Other questions might involve cybersecurity incidents. You are asked questions about how to deal with them immediately and then how to prevent similar incidents in the future.
The exam is in Japanese, but luckily no writing is required. The exam can be taken at numerous computer-based test (CBT) centers that work with the IPA. The best thing about the exam is that it’s much cheaper (JPY7,500) than a comparable CompTIA+ exam.
No at-home examination is available, but I see that as a strong point, since online exam proctoring is creepy. CBT centers will provide ear-plugs when you take the exam, a nice little touch.
Since the exam can be taken any time, the CBT rooms aren’t crowded. I took the FE exam in 2021, and even though it was a CBT, the room was crowded and noisy.
Why did I take the exam? I really needed to brush up my cybersecurity Japanese. Some words will always be localized, and I can’t count on just turning everything into Katakana when I don’t know the corresponding word in Japanese. Also, 脆弱性, 機密性, 攻撃, and 脅威 sound cool.
I didn’t necessarily learn a lot of new things about cybersecurity from a technical point of view, but it did teach me a lot about how organizations create policies and processes to guide information security (or cybersecurity) on a large scale.
A bit ironic is that in order to properly study for this exam in earnest, you would have to pay ISO to access ISO/IEC 27001 and 27002 and their JIS equivalents. Makes you think.
My own career in cybersecurity has always involved working as an outside consultant on well-defined technical projects (e.g., penetration testing, secure development). I’m usually embedded in smaller teams, mostly working on new products. I don’t usually hear about process-based information security, and this exam made it a bit more approachable for me.
As for passing the exam: taking practice exams helps, of course. Japan has fully embraced standardized testing, and countless companies specialize in helping you prepare in a standardized way, of course. Standardized testing wasn’t a thing for me back in Germany, even in University.
When I studied for the JLPT N1 in 2018, I learned how to become very efficient at test taking, including figuring out how to get to the exam venue.
On the day before, I practiced taking the subway to the exam venue to make sure I don’t mess up changing lines. I somewhat admire my past self for being so determined.
Since the exam is now offered on-demand, there aren’t a lot of sample exams provided by the IPA. In the past they would just publish all exams that were administered including the solutions.
A list of past exams (from the days of paper-based exams) or sample exams is supplied by the IPA here.
Luckily, the IPA still
publishes past exams
for all their other paper-based exams. If you are interested in passing more of
their exams, take them sooner than later. Use wget --mirror, you won’t regret
it.
A third-party interface for practicing exams is 情報セキュリティマネジメント試験ドットコム. This site is quite useful, but seeing a friend use that site without an ad-blocker was shocking.
I usually like to buy books from 技術評論社, a Japanese publisher specializing in IT related topics. Their guides are well-written, and the SG exam book is quite good as well.
If you pass the exam, you will receive a very official looking certificate by the METI. 10/10 would take again.