According to Yonhap News Agency, Lee Chan-jin, head of the Financial Supervisory Service of South Korea, stated that the CEOs and other senior executives of large financial institutions will be held accountable for the hacking incidents, and that stronger cybersecurity regulations will be promoted.
Previous self-inspections conducted by South Korean financial institutions revealed that 16 companies experienced personal information leaks, involving approximately 100,000 records. Following this, securities and insurance institutions continued to report cyber intrusions, and some virtual asset and online lending institutions suffered financial losses. Regulators plan to comprehensively inspect the system interfaces connecting financial institutions to the outside world, requiring, in principle, that external access be blocked until vulnerabilities are patched, and reviewing whether companies have implemented previous security rectification requirements.
In addition, South Korea is pushing for revisions to the Electronic Financial Transactions Act, proposing punitive fines of up to 3% of operating revenue for financial institutions that cause hacking attacks due to security management deficiencies. Lee Chan-jin also stated that before the amendments are completed, the possibility of differentiating the collection of financial regulatory fees based on the severity of security incidents will be studied to increase the cost of violations for financial institutions.
