Twenty-five companies have signed on to a new graduate program in personal data protection that Seoul Women's University is establishing with government funding. The companies agreed to support the program after aligning with the university on research into data protection technology and the training of master's and doctoral candidates. Seoul National University and Chung-Ang University are pursuing similar tie-ups with companies to train data security specialists, part of a broader push by firms to secure such talent through universities. The shift follows a string of large-scale personal data breaches last year that heightened the importance of security across industries.
The 25 companies have formally joined Seoul Women's University's plan to create a graduate department of personal data protection, according to information technology industry and university sources on the 15th. A consortium formed by Chung-Ang University and Seoul Women's University was selected for a program run by the Personal Information Protection Commission and the Korea Internet & Security Agency to train master's and doctoral specialists in personal data protection and utilization, and will receive 9.12 billion won in research funding over five years. Seoul Women's University is establishing the graduate program with that government support and plans to admit its first students in the first semester of next year.
Notably, the corporate participation came from voluntary cooperation between the university and the companies rather than government arrangement. Four of the 25 participants are designated lead partners: LG Uplus (032640.KS), EY Hanyoung, Toss and Saltlux (304100.KQ). LG Uplus will work with the university on technology research for the safe use of personal data in large-scale consumer service environments. Toss will conduct joint research on areas including financial data processing and the establishment of regulatory compliance governance.
Some companies are already showing interest in hiring. LG Uplus has signaled to the university that it intends to recruit master's and doctoral graduates from the new department, according to sources. Toss has already taken on graduate students majoring in data security as interns. "We are currently at the stage of planning joint technology development projects with major companies," an official at Seoul Women's University said. "Through industry-academia cooperation we will identify the advanced technologies each company needs, and we are designing the overall framework so that researchers taking part in these projects can go on to seek employment there."
The tie-ups between companies and universities in data security are emerging simultaneously on several fronts. Chung-Ang University created a new employment-linked admissions track as it recruits students for its industrial security department next year. The seven students admitted through the track are guaranteed jobs at one of four companies — LIG Defense & Aerospace, LG CNS (064400.KS), LG Uplus or Doosan Digital Innovation BU — after completing four years of undergraduate study. Four companies are jointly taking part in the employment-linked selection for a single department, an arrangement tailored to their needs. The format reflects the position of firms that want a stable pipeline of security personnel but cannot absorb dozens of new hires in security alone each year.
Separately, KT (030200.KS) is going through the process of setting up a contract-based retraining department with Seoul National University for information security. Once established, the department will offer a master's program in security for KT employees. The two institutions began pursuing the arrangement after unauthorized small-sum payments were made on KT customer accounts last year, according to sources.
This wave of industry-academia cooperation in data security began after a series of large-scale personal data breaches last year. Data leaks occurred in succession at the three mobile carriers — SK Telecom (017670.KS), KT and LG Uplus — while personal information from 33.7 million customer accounts was taken from Coupang. Lotte Card also saw the data of 2.97 million customers exposed through an external hacking attack. Cases in which lax security management drew public criticism and left companies facing fines running into hundreds of billions of won became frequent. Companies then began searching for data protection specialists as a matter of risk management.
The pool of available talent, however, is thin relative to market demand. Data from the Ministry of Science and ICT shows that 23% of domestic companies are having difficulty hiring data security personnel. Firms have therefore turned toward cultivating specialists early, within university programs. "Since late last year we have seen something new — division heads from the human resources departments of large companies coming to our labs to ask us to recommend graduate students well-versed in security for jobs," one university professor said.
The trend has prompted talk in the IT industry and on campuses of data protection as the next semiconductors. The 2006 creation of the semiconductor systems engineering department by Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and Sungkyunkwan University set off a proliferation of contract-based semiconductor departments at Korean universities. Observers now expect attempts to open contract-based data protection departments to follow that wave.
The rapid advance of artificial intelligence is expected to intensify the competition to secure data protection specialists in particular, as AI brings new threats of data theft and raises the importance of the security technology needed to counter them. Nvidia Chief Executive Jensen Huang said at a Goldman Sachs event recently that cybersecurity is likely to be the next major application area for AI.
"The common concern among companies recently is AI-related security," said Chang Hang-bae, a professor in the industrial security department at Chung-Ang University. "They are looking for ways to protect internal corporate data from AI, safe methods of using AI, and new security techniques that incorporate AI."
