Finance ministry panel visits KISA to discuss AI-era security

The finance ministry's strategic economic advisory panel visited the Korea Internet & Security Agency on Wednesday to examine the country's cyber threat response systems and discuss how to secure artificial intelligence development and operations.

The quantum-security subcommittee met at the agency's offices in Garak-dong, Seoul, from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m., the finance ministry said, following a semiconductor subcommittee visit on Sept. 21 and a defense subcommittee visit on Sept. 29. Park Young-sun, a former SMEs and startups minister, chairs the advisory panel, and Chun Jung-hee chairs the quantum-security subcommittee.

Panel members toured KISA's Internet Incident Response Center, where they observed a demonstration of its systems and reviewed how the agency detects, analyzes and responds to real cyber threats.

In the discussion that followed, participants reviewed ways to automate security across the entire AI development and operation cycle under an approach known as Agentic DevSecOps. They also raised the need for AI agents to check vulnerabilities continuously and analyze security data, and for stronger cryptography that protects data through the stage at which it is used.

Joining the meeting were Kim Sung-soo, a special professor at Yonsei University's College of Engineering and the panel's vice chairman, Kim Dong-ho, a deputy senior vice president at Megazone Cloud, Cho Ji-hoon, head of the security research team at Samsung SDS, and Suh Jae-hong, a mathematics professor at Hanyang University.

KISA, an internet information protection agency, handles the prevention, detection and response to cyber intrusion incidents as well as information protection policy and industry support.

The finance ministry said it will keep listening to views from the field and use the subcommittees' discussions to identify policy tasks in strategic industries and inform its policymaking.