It seems that cyber security function under National Intelligence Service to be abolished in order.

According to the security industry, President Moon Jae-in has pledged to abolish the current domestic intelligence services of National Intelligence Service and reorganize it as an ‘Overseas Security Intelligence Agency’, a top professional intelligence agency dedicated to overseas, security, terrorism and international crime. Besides, it has been revealed that new division would prevent privacy invasion such as personal location information by government agencies and establish independent cyber security strategy control tower not led by National Intelligence Service, and establish national comprehensive measures to strengthen cyber security capability.

The National Intelligence Service has been in charge of cyber security policies through the National Cyber Safety Center (NCSC). The National Security Office, which included the Cyber Security Secretary, was a nominal `cyber security control tower`. However, as the presidential pledge is clear, the internal atmosphere of the National Intelligence Service is expected to be uneasy.

An expert of the information security academy mentioned, "If the president reorganizes the National Intelligence Service as a pure intelligence agency, the service role is inevitably weakened and it is concerned of the role of cyber security within the National Intelligence Service."

Meanwhile, the frequency of cyber attacks in Korea has increased in recent years and the cyber attach methods have become so sophisticated that it is difficult to effectively cope with cyber security under distributed functions and systems. In the current system, cyber terrorism is controlled by the government and the public sector is controlled by the National Intelligence Service, the private sector is controlled by the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning and the defense sector is controlled by the Ministry of National Defense (Cyber Command). It has been pointed out that a control tower is needed to integrate all divisions.

Lee Sang-min, chairman of the Democratic Party of Korea’s Committee for Balanced Development Policy, has pointed out the need for a dedicated and independent agency to act as a cyber security control tower at the Information Security Network Information Conference held by the Korea Internet Development Agency last month. Chairman Lee said, "There are a lot of departments in charge of national cyber security work, and collaboration is not working properly among those department. Moon Jae-in government will create the cyber security control tower and we need to discuss about new division position."

Therefore, the security industry and academia are paying attention to whether the Moon Jae-in government will create a new cyber security general organization to replace the National Intelligence Service.

Kwon Hun-young, a professor at Information Security Graduate School of Korea University pointed out, "As cyber security has difficulties in distinguishing between domestic and overseas, functions related to cyber security such as espionage need to be integrated into one control tower. It is necessary to discuss the matter at a later date."

By Lee Gyung Tak kt87@


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