Recently, some personal information from several websites has often been leaked due to hacking. About 3,500 people’s personal information was leaked from Nate.com and Cyworld.com of SK communications in July. It occurred even before people had forgotten the incident that Nonghyup’s whole computer network was paralyzed by hacking in April. Besides, many other companies and organizations, including the government, have been attacked by distributed denial of service (DDos), and some companies, particularly financial firms and security service companies, have been damaged by hacking.

Loopholes in the security systemk

In the past, small and medium-sized enterprises which were vulnerable to hacking because of weak security system had been hacked. Recently, however, big businesses which have been expected to have strict security system have also been hacked. The hacked websites have low capacity to figure out the damage and solving the problems. Nate and Cyworld were hacked on July 26th, but they couldn’t detect the problems until two days later despite having a strong security system. They did not take up an insurance policy either that compensated them for their losses.

The cause is low investment for security

 Netizens are now concerned about companies’ weak security systems after they saw huge information leaks from SK communications and Nonghyup Bank. Companies’ personal information security is weak, hacking is becoming more intelligent and the extent of damage is expanding. According to ‘2010 Information Security Survey’ by Korean Internet & Security Agency (KISA), 63.54 percent of businesses responded, “Did have few expenses for information security.” The poll showed that 17.9 percent of companies were investing less than one percent of their information technology (IT) budget for information security. It represented that many enterprises paid much money for IT but that they spent little money for information security which couldn’t produce tangible results. 50.8 percent of companies responded that the reasons for insufficient investment in security were, “Didn’t feel the necessity because of few problems with information security,” and 24 percent of companies responded, “Didn’t care about security.”

New measures for the hacking incidents

On August 8th, the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) announced a new plan for protecting personal information on the Internet to cope with the increased hacking crimes and prepare for secondary damages. The main points of the plans are limiting the collecting of personal information by companies, improving the information security system in the government and companies, and understanding the importance of personal information. The officer of KCC said, “KCC will make efforts continuously to keep the online environment safe from the danger of hacking by reforming the regulations and promoting safety checks.” Meanwhile, the officer of KISA said, “KISA runs a website named Boho Nara (www.bobo.or.kr) to prevent the dangers of hacking and educate people about information security. It is important that the government and companies should work together with individual netizens.