Financial Security Institute to discuss next year's budget at the end of this month, finalize it in early December

The Financial Security Institute plans to begin discussions with member companies on next year's budget at the end of this month. It is scheduled to finalize its budget and size around early December.

The Financial Security Institute has 220 financial companies as members and funds its budget through their contributions. Votes to approve business plans, budgets and final accounts are handled by 39 representative members: 13 banks, nine financial investment companies, eight insurers, seven institutions serving small businesses and ordinary consumers, and two finance-related institutions.

The Financial Security Institute currently has 311 staff, below its authorized complement of 354. Insufficient funding has been cited as an obstacle to further hiring, while observers within and outside the financial sector expect increased staffing and budget needs to address vulnerabilities to AI hacking and operate AI security infrastructure.

As threats from high-performance AI agents such as Mythos became apparent this year, authorities increased joint blind simulation drills for the financial sector from once to twice a year, with the Financial Security Institute leading the drills. Since last year, the institute has begun verifying AI model security and evaluating safeguards for the use of generative AI in innovative financial services. It has also introduced AI red teaming, which proactively explores defects and vulnerabilities in AI systems from an attacker's perspective.

Under the Act on the Protection of Information and Communications Infrastructure, the Financial Security Institute handles integrated security monitoring and threat information sharing for the financial sector. Last year, it responded to 44.72 million intrusion attempts through integrated monitoring and collected 270,000 instances of malicious code to share with financial companies. It also checks electronic financial infrastructure for vulnerabilities and conducts drills to prepare for hacking. When an intrusion incident occurs, it investigates and analyzes the incident together with the Financial Supervisory Service.

A senior official at a financial holding company explained that promptly sharing information about a hack at one financial company with others plays a major role in helping them prepare for vulnerabilities. The official said that, because security levels differ among financial institutions, such sharing helps bring them up to a higher common standard.