IBK President Jang Minyoung Sends Thank-You Letters to 59 Employees for Responding to Hacking Attacks

Snacks delivered to information security department on October 23
"Sincere thanks for your flawless, perfect response"
IBK reports 'zero' security incidents for 14 consecutive years through last year

Jang Minyoung, president of Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK), encouraged 59 information security employees who had responded to a series of hacking incidents in the financial sector last month by sending them thank-you letters and snacks.

Jang Minyoung, president of Industrial Bank of Korea, sent a letter last month to employees in the information security department, saying, "Thank you for doing your utmost to ensure a flawless response." Photo by Lee Eunju.

According to IBK on November 12, President Jang delivered snacks and thank-you letters to employees in the information security department on October 23. In her letter, she wrote, "I sincerely thank you for doing your utmost to ensure a flawless, perfect response." She also praised their hard work, saying that their thorough preparations and swift response had helped keep IBK's cybersecurity firmly intact.

A total of 59 employees in IBK's information security organization received President Jang's thanks. They included one chief information security officer (CISO), 16 employees in the Information Security General Division, 10 employees in the Customer Information Protection Team under that division, 28 employees in the Information Security Operations Division, and four employees in the Information Security Internal Controls Team. An IBK official said, "We cannot afford to let our guard down as AI-driven hacking threats grow more sophisticated," but added, "The employees were encouraged by the president's support."

According to the office of Park Juntae, a lawmaker from the People Power Party, IBK detected and defended against 854,043 hacking attempts from January through August this year. According to parliamentary audit materials obtained by Kang Min-kook, a People Power Party lawmaker, about 942,000 hacking attempts targeted IBK from January through September this year, already exceeding the approximately 863,000 attempts recorded for all of last year.

IBK operates a 24-hour security monitoring system. It has assembled its own white-hat hacker team to conduct simulated hacking exercises and established a system for requesting access to servers and databases (DBs). Its information security budget also accounts for a larger share of its budget than the average for commercial banks. Information security spending represents about 15% of IBK's information technology (IT) budget, higher than the 10% to 11% at the five largest commercial banks. IBK said it had experienced no information security incidents for 14 consecutive years through last year.

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