Korea Internet & Security Agency

The Korea Internet & Security Agency (Korean: 한국인터넷진흥원; Hanja: 韓國인터넷振興院, KISA) is the Ministry of Science and ICT's sub-organization dealing with the allocation and maintenance of South Korea's IPv4/IPv6 address space (and the related WHOIS information), Autonomous System Numbers, and the .kr country code top-level domain (ccTLD), and also responsible for the cybersecurity of the Internet within South Korea, and runs the Korea Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center, a.k.a. KrCERT/CC, for the private sector of the country. Other roles include but are not limited to, the promotion of safe Internet usage and Internet culture, detecting and analyzing malware/viruses on the web, privacy protection, operating root CA, education on Internet and cybersecurity, and various other cybersecurity issues.

Logo of KISA

The organization was created in July 2009, as three different agencies were merged into one organization: the Korea Information Security Agency (KISA), the National Internet Development Agency (NIDA) and the Korean IT International Cooperation Agency (KIICA).[1]

KISA is the only Internet and Information Security promotion organization in Korea with an aim to improve the global competitiveness of Korea’s Internet industry. KISA has set ‘Internet promotion’ for the future and ‘Information Security’ for safety as its primary tasks and is focusing on enhancing the information security capacity of Korea’s ICT industry and expanding global cooperative partnerships based on the K-ICT Security Development Strategy.

KrCERT/CC, which is an internal division of KISA, is a CSIRT with national responsibility and a focal point of contact for Korea on international cybersecurity incident handling. It cooperates and interacts locally with the National Cyber Security Center in the National Intelligence Service of Korea, and relevant stakeholders including local Internet service providers, cybersecurity vendors, and so on. It also interacts with other national CSIRTs and global cybersecurity vendors. The KrCERT/CC has memberships of Asia Pacific Computer Emergency Response Team, APCERT, and Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams, FIRST.

KISA also has 4 regional offices overseas. They are located in Oman for the Middle East region, in Indonesia for Southeast Asia, Costa Rica for Latin America and the Caribbean, and in Tanzania for Africa. Their roles are to facilitate inter-governmental cooperation including B2B/B2G/G2B and to introduce talented Korean cybersecurity enterprises to the global market.