NATO has seen the inclusion of Japan in its Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence, which Japan Defense Minister Seiichi Hamada noted was part of the country's move to bolster its relationships and partnerships with other countries in cybersecurity, reports The Record, a news site by cybersecurity firm Recorded Future. Japan has been welcomed to CCDCOE four years after former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressed the country's intention to join the cyber cooperation center, and a year after the country's participation in NATO's Locked Shields exercise, wherein participating countries engaged in a cyber wargame that not only focused on the technical aspects of incident response amid armed conflicts, but also on the legal difficulties and information operation impact of such attacks. Such developments "could be said to reflect an intersection of two increasingly important considerations in Japanese security thinking; the criticality of diverse international partnerships in a difficult geopolitical environment, and the need to afford cybersecurity the security policy relevance it is due," said Deutsche Cyber-Sicherheitsorganisation Lead Jiro Minier.