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KT (030200) said on the 8th that it invested 127.6 billion won in the information security sector last year, maintaining the highest level of security investment among telecom carriers. The company appears to be intensifying an overhaul of its overall security systems following a hacking incident last year.
According to information security disclosures by the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA), KT invested about 127.6 billion won in the information security segment for fiscal year 2025, marking the fourth consecutive year it maintained annual investment of more than 100 billion won. This ranks third domestically for a single company and is the largest among telecom carriers (SK Telecom invested 111.1 billion won and LG Uplus 96.7 billion won last year).
Its medium- to long-term investment scale is also expected to remain solid. Early this month, KT CEO Park Yoon-young said at a press briefing that the company would invest a total of about 12 trillion won in information security, IT, and network sectors over the next three years. Under the zero-trust principle, KT plans to fully redefine its company-wide security systems and invest 4 trillion won solely in information security and IT innovation.
KT is also expanding its dedicated information security workforce, centered on internal personnel. As of last year, KT had 317 dedicated information security staff, of whom 164 (51.74%) were internal experts. At SKT and LG Uplus, the share of internal personnel was 22% and 40%, respectively. On this matter, KT explained, "Since security is a field that requires deep understanding of organizations and systems as well as accumulated, continuous experience, we operate a system in which internal experts carry out everything from establishing security strategy to protecting core systems and responding to incidents."
The company is also building a medium- to long-term system for cultivating security experts. It operates a customized security academy for IT and network developers and has recently been pushing to establish a contract department in the information security field with Seoul National University.
Since CEO Park Yoon-young took office, KT has been strengthening its personal data protection governance. In April, during an organizational restructuring, it integrated security functions into the Information Security Office and separately appointed a Chief Privacy Officer (CPO), and in May it launched a Personal Data Protection Advisory Committee.
Going forward, KT plans to further strengthen field-centered security governance. In this regard, KT's Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), Executive Vice President Lee Sang-woon, 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 inspect the on-site implementation of security policies.
