The South Korean government announced a five-year plan to boost the cybersecurity sector.
A much needed move considering the nation's growing dependence on information and communications technology.
Kim Ji-yeon introduces us to K-ICT Security 2020 .
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Kim Ji-yeon, Arirang News.