Thank you for your continued use of Assured.

At Assured, we are committed to constantly enhancing the quality of our services. In line with this commitment, we are making important revisions to our security assessment process.

Effective May 15, 2025, at 18:00 (JST), we will implement changes to certain assessment items. We understand that this update may require additional efforts on your end, and we sincerely appreciate your understanding and cooperation.

Background and Summary of Revisions

For a more appropriate security assessment, we periodically revise the assessment items in response to evolving security risks and guideline updates.

In this revision (v2025.1), the changes aim to:

Address our users’ feedback regarding specific assessment items
Improve the quality of the assessment
Respond to recent security-related trends

Summary of Revisions

The main changes are as follows:

1．Addressing User Feedback

Clarified that backup data is included in the scope of data deletion performed by the cloud service provider (CSP) (AS-3).
Added new questions regarding the management structure and authentication methods for service accounts (AC-7, AC-10).
Refined questions regarding the existence of logs retained by the CSP by detailing log information (OP-8).
Added questions about the availability of logs for cloud service customers (CSC), including provision on user request (AT-1 to AT-4).
Added questions about configuring AI services to prevent input data from being used for learning (AI-2).

2．Further Improving Assessment Quality

Reviewed and updated all questions related to compliance with the Personal Information Protection Act (all DT and LO questions).
Revised question structure to address the use of Single Sign-On (SSO) and the diversification of authentication methods (AC-14, AC-15, AC-16, AC-17).
Refined question wording to enhance the accuracy of responses (OR-1, EM-1, EM-2, PH-1, OP-16, EF-3, etc.).

3．Responding to Trends

Added new questions regarding security governance frameworks (OR-2).

(Note: The codes in parentheses refer to the items in the current assessment.)

List of Revised Items (Comparison Table)

Please refer to the comparison table, which will be available on this page.

Important Notes for Responding to the Revised Assessment:

Service Suspension for Maintenance

Date and Time:

May 15, 2025, from 19:00 to 26:00 (JST) (i.e., until 2:00 AM on May 16, 2025)

Details:

During this period, our service will be temporarily suspended, and a maintenance screen will be displayed.

Post-Revision Editing and Response Migration

After the revision is applied, editing responses will be temporarily unavailable while we migrate the response data.
Viewing existing assessment responses will still be possible during the migration.
The migration may take several hours to complete.

Handling of Revised Items

For already submitted assessment requests, there is no need to re-answer the revised items.
For new assessment requests, all revised items must be answered before submitting a review request.
For service user companies' accounts:
On the transaction page for submitted assessments, your previously submitted answers will continue to be displayed.
This applies to shared responses as well, including those shared through request acceptance forms.

For Assessment Requests in Progress

If you started answering before the revision, you may continue to answer based on the pre-revision question set.
If you start answering after the revision, you must respond based on the updated question set.

Please note that assessments remaining in progress for approximately three months will automatically transition to the revised set of questions.

Contact Information

For any inquiries regarding our services:

Please use the chat icon located at the bottom right corner of the page.
Or contact us via email at the address provided on the support page.
You may also reach out directly to your assigned sales representative.

Key Reminder

Please ensure that for new requests, you have answered all updated questions before requesting a review.

We appreciate your understanding and cooperation as we work to enhance the quality of our assessment processes.

The Assured Team

support@assured.jp