KT (030200.KS) said Wednesday that it has invested more than 100 billion won in information security for four consecutive years, maintaining the highest level of security investment among Korean telecommunications companies.
According to the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) information security disclosure portal, KT invested approximately 127.6 billion won in information security for fiscal year 2025, maintaining annual investment of more than 100 billion won for four straight years. This ranks third among individual companies in Korea and the largest among telecom carriers, ahead of SK Telecom's 111.1 billion won and LG Uplus's 96.7 billion won last year.
Mid- to long-term investment is also expected to remain robust. Earlier this month, KT Chief Executive Park Yoon-young said at a press conference that the company would invest a total of approximately 12 trillion won in information security, IT and network areas over the next three years. Under a zero-trust principle, KT plans to fully redefine its company-wide security framework and invest 4 trillion won in information security and IT innovation.
KT has also significantly expanded its dedicated information security workforce, centered on internal personnel. As of last year, KT had 317 dedicated information security staff, of whom 164 were internal specialists. Regarding this, KT said, "Because security is a field that requires deep understanding of the organization and systems as well as continuous accumulated experience, we operate a system in which internal specialists handle everything from establishing security strategy to protecting core systems and responding to incidents."
KT is also building a mid- to long-term system for developing security specialists. It operates a customized security academy for IT and network developers, and has recently been pursuing the establishment of a contract-based department in the field of information security with Seoul National University.
Marking Information Security Day, KT will hold an internal "Information Security Week" throughout July. Information Security Week is a program designed to establish security not as a mere regulation but as a working culture. It continuously delivers core security messages containing the importance of information security and action guidelines to executives and employees, and conducts participatory campaigns.
Based on recommendations to prevent recurrence from a joint public-private investigation team last year, KT has established an information security master plan and is pursuing innovation across its entire security framework. It is also systematically implementing and reviewing company-wide recurrence-prevention tasks, continuing its transition to a prevention-focused security system.
In addition, KT is expanding its zero-trust-based system of constant prevention and preemptive response and advancing AI-based security technologies, continuing its shift from an incident-response-focused security system to a prevention-focused one. It is also strengthening personal information protection governance, including appointing a separate Chief Privacy Officer (CPO) and launching a personal information protection advisory committee in May this year.
KT plans to further strengthen field-oriented security governance going forward.
In this regard, Lee Sang-woon, Executive Vice President and Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), recently made sequential visits to the Mokdong data center, the Eastern Core Operations Center (Busan), the Metropolitan Control Center (Guro) and the Western Core Operations Center (Daejeon) to check the implementation status of security policies and verify on-site security execution capabilities.
"In the AI era, information security requires constant prevention and preemptive response even more than post-incident response," Lee said. "KT will not stop at simply strengthening security technology, but will build a robust information security system in which organization, personnel and processes work together, and will continue to strengthen its security competitiveness so that it can leap forward as an AX platform company that customers can trust most."
