LG Uplus to ramp up cybersecurity with $503 mil. investment

LG Uplus Chief Information Security Officer Hong Kwan-hee speaks during a press conference at the company’s headquarters in Yongsan District, Seoul, Tuesday. Courtesy of LG Uplus

LG Uplus plans to invest about 700 billion won ($503.2 million) over the next five years to strengthen its cybersecurity capabilities, the mobile carrier said Tuesday.

Since establishing a task force dedicated to information security in 2023, the company has been reinforcing its security system around three core pillars: security governance, security prevention and security response.

“This year alone, the company plans to invest between 120 and 130 billion won in data protection and will continue to invest at least 120 to 150 billion won each year going forward,” Hong Kwan-hee, LG Uplus’ chief information security officer, said during a press conference at the company’s headquarters in Seoul's Yongsan District.

"We will focus most on building zero trust, while also investing in AI (artificial intelligence), privacy compliance and encryption.”

Zero trust is a security framework that operates on the principle of always verifying.

According to the Korea Internet & Security Agency, the company invested about 82.8 billion won in data protection in 2024, a 31.1 percent increase from the previous year, with plans to raise that by 30 percent again this year.

Since last November, LG Uplus has been conducting its longest-ever black box penetration testing, inviting outside white-hat hacker groups to probe all its services for security vulnerabilities. The company plans to extend this test through the first half of next year.

“This search for security threats uses every possible means, conducted for the longest period of time and it’s hard to find any domestically comparable effort at this scale or duration,” Hong said.

“The goal is to minimize surfaces that could be targeted for outside attacks, so users can feel secure using our services.”

The company also announced it will develop more advanced AI-based security monitoring to automate detection and response against unauthorized access, and build a zero trust model specialized for LG Uplus by 2027.

LG Uplus also introduced its multilayered defense system for voice phishing and text messaging crimes, which included an AI-powered monitoring system, blocking spam texts and malicious links and tracking malicious app servers.

The company’s AI agent, ixi-O, detects suspicious calls in real-time and warns the users, identifying about 2,000 such calls every month on average since its launch in November 2023.

Regarding malicious apps, the company immediately sends out an alert via KakaoTalk, assisting customers to get help from its security advisors or local police nearby. It plans to train its AI on the criminals’ actual call patterns to build a system that can instantly connect at-risk customers with police.