The Korean government is aggressively spearheading its bid to promote e-Government exports by signing MOUs with strategic countries, holding high-level government officials’  meetings, and publicizing abroad the strengths of Korea’ s e-Government systems, said Chang Kwang-soo, deputy minister of the Informatization Strategy Office at the Ministry of Public Administration and Security (MOPAS).

“Korea’s winning the top honors in the U.N. e-Government Survey for the second straight time is expected to enhance the nation’ s global e-Government standing and create more national interests, such as the expanding of e-Government exports,” Chang said. “Thanks to the nation’ s e-Government prominence, global attention is mounting on the nation’s advanced public administration regimes and systems,” he said.  In the first six months of this year, 275 people from 48 countries have visited MOPAS to take their cues from Korea’s e-Government services.” 

In explaining the background of the government’ s designation of Information Security Day, Deputy Minister Chang said, “Countermeasures need to be taken against the increasing sophistication of cyber threats and the emergence of DDoS attack variants, including R.U.D.Y. (aRe-yoU-Dead-Yet).” He noted, “MOPAS is attaching priority on protecting information systems by taking preemptive measures against cyber threats by recognizing them in advance and analyzing them.” 

The following are excerpts of an interview between NewsWorld and the MOPAS deputy minister in which he touched on the government’ s countermeasures against cyber threats, strategies to boost Korean e-Government exports, and other policies.  

Question: Would you tell our readers about the reason for the designation of Information Security Day?

Answer: Korea has gained global recognition for its world-class e-Government, as the nation ranked first in the U.N. e-Government Survey 2012 for the second time following the top honors in 2010. Advancement of informatization has resulted in boosting convenience, but the downside of informatization is that cyberspace threats such as hacking/DDoS attacks continue to get smarter and more sophisticated. 

The government decided to designate the second Wednesday of July as Information Security Day to inform the general public of the severe consequences of cyberspace invasions and the importance of information security, as demonstrated by the July 7, 2009 massive distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that disrupted services of government and private organizations. The Korea Communications Commission (KCC), the Ministry of Public Administration and Security (MOPAS), the National Intelligence Service (NIS), and the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE) jointly held a ceremony to mark the first Information Security Day.

Q: Would you explain the events celebrating the Month of Information Security?

A: In addition to the designation of Information Security Day, the government also decided to set July as the Month of Information Security. Government agencies hold diverse activities to enhance public awareness toward information security this month and put them into action.

With the goal of enhancing public awareness toward information security through people’ s participation, government agencies hold events such as the International Conference on Information Security 2012, a knowledge information security job fair, a hacking defense contest and an invitational CEO information security meeting. The Youth IT Security Camp and the Information Ethics Safeguard Camp targeting primary and secondary school students as well as the Collegian Information Security Debate and the Cyber Attack Scenario Contest are to be held as part of efforts to ramp up educational programs and publicity activities on information security catering to youth. The National Defense Information Security Conference and the Financial Security Education Program and other events are to take place for national defense, financing, diplomacy, and other fields. 

Q: Cyber threats such as hacking and DDoS attacks get smarter and bigger, menacing e-Government. What steps dose MOPAS take to fight such cyber threats?

A: Countermeasures need to be taken against the sophistication of cyber threats and the emergence of DDoS attack variants, including R.U.D.Y. (aRe-yoU-Dead-Yet). 

MOPAS is attaching priority on protecting information systems by taking preemptive measures against cyber threats by recognizing in advance and analyzing them. First, the security & network division of the National Computing & Information Agency (NCIA) under MOPAS will be reorganized to strengthen collection and analysis of information on cyber threats against e-Government services. In December 2012, a system for secure software development will be introduced to remove security loopholes of government systems starting from the development stage. Each government and public organization will be asked to step up information security on its own according to information security manuals, to be  distributed by MOPAS in October 2012, and ramp up support for each body’ s information security diagnosis and consulting. 

Q:  Would you specify steps to prevent the spread of damages caused by the leakage of personal information?

A: Chances are high that the leaking of personal information would spill over to secondary damages such as phishing, spamming, and the illegal use of other’ s names. 

In order to prevent the spread of damages caused by the leaking of personal information, the requirement to notify users of the leaking of their personal information so the victims can take immediate and necessary steps such as changing passwords and reinforcing their security has been introduced in Article 34 of the Act on the Protection of Personal Information. In the case that the personal information of more than 10,000 people is leaked, portal sites and other entities are required to report to MOPAS their notifications and the outcomes of countermeasures. MOPAS provides technological support such as the analysis of the leakages and the taking of security measures in order to prevent the spread of secondary damages and to repair those damages. 

Violators will be sternly dealt with according to law, and small business proprietors will be given support to correct violations. Those who violate the requirement of notifying the leakage of personal information and fail to report the outcomes of countermeasures shall be charged up to 30 million won in penalties.

Q: Does MOPAS have any plans to strengthen information security in the future?

A: The government considers it more important to cultivate excellent information security experts among its other steps to heighten responses against cyber threats. Information security officials at government and public organizations will be educated on ways of continuously ensuring information security. Approximately 1,000 officials will have undergone or are to undergo 13 courses, including one on hacking response technologies, on 33 times during this year. A state-administered information security technician examination will be introduced in 2013 to foster expert manpower on information security.

Starting in 2014, information security will be added to the subjects of examinations for hiring computer-related government officials so that excellent information security manpower can be given more opportunities to land government jobs. 

MOPAS plans to continuously expand information security infrastructure to effectively prevent and cope with cyber threats. The government set aside 263.3 billion won for promoting information security, which accounts for 8.1 percent of the total budget for informatization. 

Q: Korea’ s e-Government system won global grand prizes from the United Nations two times in a row. What’ s the significance of the nation’ s winning the award?

A: The nation’ s e-Government system took the grand prizes in the top three categories °™ “global grand prize,” “regional grand prize,” and “global on-line participation grand prize” °™ on June 25, according to the outcomes of the U.N. e-Government Survey 2012 by the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Korea’ s e-Government system has proven its top-rated position once again at the U.N. headquarters in New York, the center of global diplomacy. 

The biannual U.N. e-Government Survey of 193 member states has been conducted since 2003 to explore international cooperation among member states and ramp up competiveness by comparing the development levels of each member country. 

Korea’ s winning the top honors in the U.N. e-Government Survey for the second straight time is expected to enhance the nation’ s global e-Government standing and create more national interests, such as the expanding of e-Government exports. Thanks to the nation’ s e-Government prominence, global attention is mounting on the nation’ s advanced public administration regimes and systems. In the first six months of this year, 275 people from 48 countries have visited MOPAS to take their cues from Korea’ s e-Government services. Among the countries and organizations that have come here to learn Korea’ s advanced public administration practices as an example of benchmarking are the Dominican Republic, Poland, Bahrain, and the International Association of Legislation. 

Q: I’ ve heard that the e-Government export market is gaining growth momentum. What strategies is the government employing to boost e-Government exports?

A: The overseas public information market for Korean e-Government exports is estimated at some $160 billion (170 trillion won), equivalent to the value of the global mobile phone market. As overseas concern and demand for Korean e-Government systems is on the rise following Korea’ s ranking 1st in the U.N. e-Government Survey, the Korean e-Government export market has made strides with an annual average of 121 percent in the recent five years. Korea has seen the e-Government export market surge from $9.87 million in 2008 to $66.7 million in 2009, $148.7 million in 2010, and $235.6 million in 2011. 

But the Korean e-Government export market still has hurdles for expansion. First, Korean e-Government exporters have difficulties exploring the overseas information market, which is dominated by multinational juggernauts, including IBM. The Korean e-Government export market is too risky and high in costs. And since exporters have to handle governments as business partners, it will take between three and five years to complete the process ranging from placing orders to selecting final winners. It also costs large sums of money to develop e-Government systems due to different e-Government levels and systems of each government. 

Accordingly, the Korean government is aggressively taking the initiative in boosting e-Government exports by signing MOUs with strategic countries, holding high-level government officials’  meetings, and publicizing abroad the strengths of Korea’ s e-Government systems. Actually, whenever we hold meetings with foreign ministers and vice ministers, they’ ve expressed much interest in Korea’ s e-Government systems and intentions to learn them from Korea. I believe that if we take advantage of such moves and aggressively publicize the Korean public administration industry, Korea will see its e-Government exports naturally rise.