The recent financial accident involving a data breach for up to 15 million credit card holders here is arousing further concerns over the nation’s cyber security as evidence is popping up that other financial sectors, such as brokerages and insurance companies, may have also suffered such breaches.
On Wednesday, stock brokerage insiders revealed that there had been a hacking attack on Koscom, which provides more than half of Korea’s 62 securities firms with IT infrastructure and financial operation services.
Koscom also holds domestic investors’ data on stock trading settlement accounts and investment performance.
Though the company averted a large-scale information leak, Koscom was found to have lost some internal documents when an employee’s computer was hacked in December 2012. The leaked data reportedly circulated in Japan, the sources said.
“The company has separated its intranet computers from the Internet-available computers in a bid to prevent network glitches and also scammers attempting to penetrate the cyber firewalls,” said a brokerage house executive.
The Financial Supervisory Service came under more fire for failing to publicize the brokerage sector hacking immediately after it was discovered.
In the aftermath, the regulator had only conducted one low-key investigation into the case, which is now triggering backlash over how the government is partially to blame for the repeated cyber crimes.
Furthermore, data leaks also occurred at NongHyup Securities and Leading Investment & Securities in 2011.
For the insurance sector, regulatory inspectors revealed last year that Hanwha General Insurance saw personal information totaling about 157,000 cases leaked due to a hacking incident between March and May 2011.
According to the FSS, the 157,000 cases involve vehicle-registration and resident-registration numbers of 119,000 insurance policyholders.
The Hanwha Group’s nonlife insurance unit was found to have hidden the fact at least for one year until September 2012.
Further, it has been found that Hanwha General “insincerely” notified the FSS of the accident even after police revealed the leak in September 2012.
By Kim Yon-se (
kys@heraldcorp.com)
