Naver Consortium Selected for "Cybersecurity-Specialized AI Model" Development Project (Comprehensive)

Strengths in Practical Security Operation and Defense Experience from Naver Services

Yuwon Kim, CEO of Naver Cloud, Yonhap News Agency

Naver Cloud has been selected as the final contractor for the Ministry of Science and ICT's “Cybersecurity-Specialized AI Foundation Model Development” project.

On September 3, the Ministry of Science and ICT announced that it had conducted presentation evaluations with the two applicants (SK Telecom and Naver Cloud) who entered the “Cybersecurity-Specialized AI Foundation Model Development” project contest, and selected the Naver Cloud consortium as the final institution to carry out the project.

In the presentation evaluations, panels composed of external experts in the fields of AI and cybersecurity assessed the technological capabilities, development experience, development strategy and methods, development goals, excellence and feasibility, marketability, and ripple effects of each consortium based on their submitted proposals and presentations.

Naver Cloud received high marks for its formation of a large-scale industry-academia-research consortium with outstanding technological prowess and development experience, as well as for its development strategies and goals, such as configuring multiple agents and harnesses.

From this month, Naver Cloud will be provided with a total of 256 NVIDIA B200 GPUs for ten months. After five months, support for the remaining five months will be determined based on the results of an interim evaluation.

Naver Consorts with 32 Companies and Institutions Including LG Affiliates

Earlier, Naver Cloud announced a joint consortium with LG CNS, pledging to develop a model optimized for Korea’s security environment by leveraging its own “full-stack” technological capabilities, spanning AI models, infrastructure, security, and data.

Naver Cloud highlighted its experience in tailoring and operating foundation models for “closed network and on-premises” environments in areas with the highest levels of security regulation, such as nuclear energy and finance, as one of its key strengths. The company explained that its proven ability to stably run large language models (LLMs) within highly restricted, isolated environments from external networks directly meets the requirements of this project, where closed-network deployment and data sovereignty are essential.

Additionally, the company aims to implement a field-ready model by combining its on-the-ground experience in security operations and defense—which has safeguarded Naver’s services against real-world cyber threats—with its know-how in public cloud security authentication (CSAP)-based data encryption and isolation.

Naver Cloud has formed a consortium with 32 companies and institutions, including LG CNS, LG AI Research Institute, LG Uplus and other LG Group affiliates, ESTSecurity, Trillion Labs, Theory Korea, HyperAccel, Korea Aerospace Industries, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, Financial Security Institute, Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, Seoul National University’s Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, POSTECH’s Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation, and others.

Yuwon Kim, CEO of Naver Cloud, said, “As cyber threats are becoming ever more sophisticated through the use of AI, it is crucial that defense systems are also internalized using proprietary AI technology—which is now a core element of national security. By developing a sovereign security AI that best understands the domestic cyber threat environment, and leveraging our real-world security expertise, we will elevate the nation’s security capabilities to a new level.”

The Ministry of Science and ICT will sign a contract with the selected contractor within this month and launch the development of the cybersecurity-specialized AI model with the provided GPU support. Additionally, a working-level collaborative body with Naver Cloud will be established immediately to accelerate the achievement of tangible results.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.