At the 15th Information Protection Day ceremony held at the Shilla Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul on the 8t..

At the 15th Information Protection Day ceremony held at the Shilla Hotel in Jung-gu, Seoul on the 8th, warnings continued that artificial intelligence (AI) was changing the game of cyberattacks and defenses. U.S., U.K., global big tech, and domestic security experts agreed that the core of cybersecurity in the AI era is 'defense using AI'.

The event, co-hosted by the Ministry of Science and ICT, the National Intelligence Service, and the Ministry of Public Administration and Security, was held under the theme of "Safety AI Era, Korea is Leading." Officials from the government, industry and academia attended to information protection strategies in the AI era. The three telecom companies also participated in the event for the first time, and SK Telecom Chief Information Protection Officer (CISO) Jonghyun Lee, KT CISO Lee Sang-woon and LG Uplus CISO Hong Kwan-hee attended.

Adam Beaumont, director of the AI Safety Research Institute in the UK, issued the strongest warning. "The latest AI model has advanced beyond simple vulnerability detection to the level of dominating the entire network," Beaumont said. "Until recently, AI performed only the initial stage of the attack, but now it can perform multi-level penetration attacks similar to the real one." He also stressed that it is the role of each country's AI safety research institute to analyze the risks posed by AI scientifically and help the government respond correctly.

Shane Huntley, chief technology officer (CTO) of Google Threat Intelligence Group, also analyzed that AI is raising both the scale, speed, and sophistication of attacks. "Now is not an era of worrying false positives, but an era in which we have to respond to a constant stream of attacks," said CTO Huntley. "AI can bring a much greater advantage in terms of defense as it has an excellent ability to find vulnerabilities." Defenders had the burden of responding according to the size of the attacker, which explains that AI can reduce this burden.

Nick Anderson, acting director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), said cooperation between countries will become more important in the AI era. Acting Anderson said, "AI technology can provide new means of attack to hostile forces," adding, "We see an important opportunity to further expand cooperation with the Korean Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Intelligence Service."

Domestic experts also diagnosed that AI-based attacks are becoming a reality. Lee Sang-geun, a professor at Korea University, said, "Now an era has opened where anyone can hack using frontier AI for money," and predicted, "If AI hacking becomes commonplace, attacks can be made every minute." Professor Lee stressed, "We are at an important crossroads whether we will secure our own AI technology to protect digital sovereignty or be subordinate to big tech."

Yoon Doo-sik, CEO of Lee Woon & Company, said, "AI is developing at a tremendous pace, but there is still a lack of means to control it. We need to create safety standards and systems together while introducing AI as the fastest in the world."

"AI is spreading rapidly throughout our society and the importance of information protection is growing more than ever," Lee Jae Myung said in a congratulatory speech read by Song Ki-ho, the third deputy chief of the National Security Office. "We will expand the cross-ministerial cooperation system and actively foster AI-based security technology and industrial ecosystem."

The government also announced that it will begin to transform AI-based security systems in earnest. "We are completely transforming the cyber infringement response system in the private sector to AI-based," said Ryu Je-myung, second vice minister of science and ICT. "In the future, we will actively use AI in the entire process of tracking, detection, response, and analysis of threats to prevent threats and respond more quickly and accurately."

At the ceremony, government awards were also given to 35 people of information protection merit. Lee Dong-beom, CEO of Genius, won the National Medal of Merit, while Kim Yong-dae, a professor at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and Ha Jae-chul, a professor at Hoseo University, won the National Medal of Merit. The government will designate the month of July as "Information Protection Month" and continue various events such as AI Security Red Team Symposium and Codegate Hacking Defense Competition.