S. Korea to spend 670 bln won on cyber security by 2023

SEOUL, Feb. 18 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's ICT ministry said Thursday it will spend 670 billion won (US$607 million) by 2023 to bolster the country's cyber security capabilities to respond to growing new digital threats.

The Ministry of Science and ICT said it will develop infrastructure to quickly respond to cyber security threats, by working with major cloud and data center companies to collect threat information in real time, compared to the current system that relies on individual reports.

Such threats will be quickly notified to companies, and the ministry plans to provide security patches by working with security companies.

The ministry said it will expand the size of cyber threat information that it gathers to include those from major social networking services, the dark web and virtual services, such as remote education and digital health care.

It added that it will de-identify any personal or sensitive information to address concerns of user information being abused.

The ministry said it hopes to reduce the rate of information security violations experienced by local companies to less than 1.5 percent by 2023, compared with 2 percent last year.

To accelerate the private sector's adoption of digital services, the ministry said it will also conduct security checks and introduce security solutions to 1,300 small and medium-sized companies every year.

South Korea ranked 15th in the global cybersecurity index in 2018 by the International Telecommunication Union, a United Nations agency.

The ministry said it hopes to raise its rank to fifth place by 2023.

yunhwanchae@yna.co.kr
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