LG Uplus to Triple its Cybersecurity Budget After Breaches & Attacks

LG Uplus, a telecommunications provider owned by LG Corporation, committed to tripling its cybersecurity budget, creating a monitoring committee, and employing experts to strengthen customer data protections, following data breaches and network attacks earlier in the year.

On Jan. 10, South Korea’s third-largest wireless carrier revealed that 180,000 of its customers’ personal information, including names, birth dates, and phone numbers, had been breached.

On January 29 and February 4, it was reported that the company experienced network outages that may have been caused by a distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attack or a malicious attempt to disrupt a server, service, or network’s normal traffic by saturating the target or its surrounding infrastructure with an excessive amount of Internet traffic.

In response, LG Uplus CEO Hwang Hyeon-sik apologized and promised to invest KRW100 billion ($76.9m) annually to strengthen the company’s data security capabilities. Hwang stated that he is well aware that network and information security are the cornerstones of the telecoms industry after outlining a cyber-safety innovation plan targeted at regaining customer trust.

“I offer a sincere apology to our customers for causing inconvenience due to our internet service disruption. We see the incidents are grave challenges. As a telecommunications service provider, we should have focused more on network security,” said Hwang.

The company’s regulatory filings reveal that LG Uplus invested KRW29.2 billion ($22.4m) in the cybersecurity industry in 2021. The top management of LG Uplus announced that the company would increase its annual investment on information security to 100 billion won in an effort to stop the recurrence of such cyberattacks in the aftermath of the data breaches and network attacks.

It will hire security experts as part of its plans to increase network security, and they will assess its network infrastructure and its response capabilities. It will also hold an international competition for white-hat hackers to discover talent.

According to Hwang, the company would establish a consultative group to develop a practical compensation plan for customers who suffered damages as a result of DDoS attacks-related service failures.

“We acknowledged that network and information security is the basic task of telecommunication business, and it is linked to customer confidence. We will make constant efforts to become a more trustworthy and capable company,” said Hwang.