Korean intelligence agency opens cybersecurity collaboration center

By Dain Oh, The Readable
Nov. 30, 2022 9:16PM KST

The South Korean intelligence agency has opened the cybersecurity collaboration center on Wednesday, which is specifically designed to promote information sharing between the private and public sector concerning cybersecurity and collaborative responses to cyber threats on a national level.

The National Intelligence Service announced on November 30 that it opened the cybersecurity collaboration center in Pangyo, the city often referred to as the Silicon Valley of South Korea. At the opening ceremony, which took place on the same day, high-ranking figures from the government and the cybersecurity industry made appearances, including Kim Kyou-hyun, the NIS chief.

The national cybersecurity collaboration center is the agency’s accomplishment after two years of efforts to increase information sharing in the cybersecurity industry in response to skyrocketing cyberattacks pouring into the country. Since the first news about the establishment of the center was reported by a local newspaper in February 2021, there have been great expectations regarding the enhancement of cybersecurity leveraged by the center.

The center will gather cybersecurity experts both from the private and public sector into one place with a shared aim of responding to cyber threats, which have been more advanced and sophisticated than ever, the agency elaborated. The current participants include the NIS, the Ministry of Science and Technology, the Ministry of National Defense, AhnLab, ESTsecurity, S2W, and Chainalysis.

With various facilities, such as a collaborative analysis room, a technology sharing room, and an educational training ground, the center will play a role helping the participating experts to collaborate with each other, particularly regarding ransomware, cryptocurrency heists, malicious codes, and indicators of compromise.

Moreover, the NIS plans to develop the next generation of  the information sharing system of national cyber threats and double its participant pool, which is currently 479 entities.

The National Security Agency of the United States and the Government Communications Headquarters of the United Kingdom have been fortifying their private and public collaborations through the cybersecurity collaboration centers, the NIS mentioned in a press release.

“Collaboration with the private sector and the allied nations is the cornerstone of national cybersecurity to respond to transnational cyber threats,” said Kim Kyou-hyun, the NIS chief.

ohdain@thereadable.co

The cover image of this article was designed by Areum Hwang.

Dain Oh is an award-winning cybersecurity journalist based in South Korea and the founding editor-in-chief of The Readable by S2W. Before joining S2W, she worked as a reporter for The Electronic Times, the top IT newspaper in Korea, covering the cybersecurity industry on an in-depth level. She reported numerous exclusive stories, and her work related to the National Intelligence Service led to her being honored with the Journalist of the Year Award in 2021 by the Korea Institute of Information Security and Cryptology in a unanimous decision. She was also the first journalist to report on the hacking of vulnerable wallpads in South Korean apartments, which later became a nation-wide issue.