The South Korean government announced a five-year plan to boost the cybersecurity sector.<br />A much needed move considering the nation's growing dependence on information and communications technology.<br />Kim Ji-yeon introduces us to K-ICT Security 2020 . <br />ICT development has become intertwined with a broad range of civilian sectors including medicine and traffic, but behind the technological advances are an increasingly broad range of cybersecurity threats.<br />The economic losses stemming from cybersecurity threats in Korea alone are estimated at more than 3-billion U.S. dollars a year, more than double that from natural disasters.<br />To address these issues, the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning has come up with a five-year plan to boost the country's cybersecurity sector.<br />Under its K-ICT Security 2020 plan,... the ministry says it will support industries related to cybersecurity -- including the medical, energy, transportation, manufacturing and home appliance sectors -- to build up cybersecurity functions during the product or service development stage.<br />The ministry will also devise plans to support the development of smart surveillance cameras, bio forensics and video analysis based on big data in the future.<br />In addition, the ministry will help build up a "K-Security" brand for cybersecurity exports to Tanzania, Oman, Indonesia and Costa Rica deemed as strategically important regional gateways.<br />The ministry believes nurturing the cybersecurity sector,... which it views as a new growth engine for the government's creative economy initiative,... could help create more than a hundred cybersecurity startups by 2020... and produce 19-thousand new jobs in the process.<br />It also says the plan could help triple Korea's cybersecurity exports from the current volume to more than 3-point-9-billion U.S. dollars by 2020.<br />Kim Ji-yeon, Arirang News.
