Shinhan Investment spent W17.1b on cybersecurity last year, vows to keep investing in AI era

Shinhan Investment said Thursday it has been steadily expanding its cybersecurity investment and capabilities to counter increasingly sophisticated cyber threats in the AI era, marking Information Security Day on Wednesday.

According to a disclosure filed with the Korea Internet & Security Agency, Shinhan Investment invested about 17.1 billion won ($11.2 million) in information security last year, accounting for 11.2 percent of its total IT spending — a high ratio by industry disclosure standards. The firm's overall IT investment stood at 152.3 billion won. Its dedicated information security workforce totals 53.6 personnel.

The company established an information security division and center in 2015 to handle cybersecurity and personal data protection, and has filed annual security disclosures since 2022. It also maintains an internationally certified security framework under ISO/IEC 27001. The firm conducts regular penetration testing and incident-response drills to assess its readiness.

Key investment areas include an unstructured data access-control solution and an open-source vulnerability management system, with a focus on data protection and software supply chain security.

Shinhan Investment is also strengthening attack surface management and network traffic monitoring to counter external threats, and continuously tests its defenses against real-world attack scenarios through red-team penetration exercises.

In line with the growing use of AI internally, the company is building an AI security framework to prevent leaks of sensitive information and block harmful outputs, while also developing systems capable of proactively intercepting internal data leaks and enabling post-incident tracing.

"Information security is a core value directly tied to trust — the very foundation of finance — and our growth strategy can only be sustained on a solid foundation of internal controls and security," a company official said. "Even as the environment changes rapidly with the spread of AI, we will continue to expand our investment in safe services and the protection of customer information."

In June, Shinhan Investment also tightened its risk management framework for credit and leveraged investments to prevent customer losses, expanding risk disclosures across the entire process from service application to actual trading and reinforcing AI-based monitoring.