1.About CRYPTREC
CRYPTREC is an abbreviation of Cryptography Research and Evaluation Committees, and it refers to a project to evaluate and monitor the security of e-Government recommended ciphers, as well as to examine the establishment of evaluation criteria for cryptographic modules.
It consists of the CRYPTREC Advisory Committee (chairperson, Hideki Imai; a professor at Chuo University), which is jointly constituted by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication (MIC) and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI); the Cryptographic Technique Monitoring Subcommittee (chairperson, Hideki Imai; a professor at Chuo University), and the Cryptographic Module Subcommittee (chairperson, Tsutomu Matsumoto; a professor at Yokohama National University), which are jointly constituted by the National Institute of Information and Communication Technology (NICT) and the Information-technology Promotion Agency, Japan (IPA).

2.Background and purpose
It is necessary to assure security of e-Government, and it is indispensable to use a cryptographic technique that is excellent in security, in order to construct a state-of-the-art IT nation in the world, which our country is aiming at, currently. To this end, the cryptographic technique evaluation project was organized for the scheduled period of three years, beginning in the 2000 fiscal year, to list up the cryptographic techniques that are judged to be excellent in security and implementation by objective evaluation, and this project was named CRYPTREC (Cryptography Research and Evaluation Committees).

CRYPTREC evaluated and examined cryptographic techniques publicly invited and the cryptographic techniques widely used in industries, and selected those that were excellent in security and implementation. Based on these evaluation results, the MIC and the METI publicized, on February 20, 2003, the list of ciphers that are recommended for the procurement of "e-Government" (e-Government Recommended Ciphers List). The "Policy for the use of ciphers in information system procurement of each governmental agency" was approved by the administrative-information-system-related division managers' liaison meeting on February 28, 2003, to the effect that the use of ciphers enumerated in the e-Government Recommended Ciphers List must be promoted, as much as possible, when using ciphers to construct the information system of each agency.

The MIC and the METI decided to continue the activities of the CRYPTREC project even after the 2003 fiscal year, in order to ensure the security and reliability of e-Government. In addition, the Cryptographic Technique Monitoring Subcommittee was newly established, to monitor and investigate the security of ciphers enumerated in the e-Government Recommended Ciphers List, and also, the Cryptographic Module Subcommittee was organized, seeking to establish evaluation criteria in Japan for the cryptographic modules in which ciphers are implemented.