The Korea Digital Authentication Association said on the 2nd that Yeom Heung-yeol, an emeritus professor in the Department of Information Security at Soonchunhyang University, took office as the new chair.
At an inauguration ceremony attended by executives and officials from member companies the same day, Chair Yeom laid out a vision to strengthen the association's capabilities so that Korea's world-class digital identity and authentication technologies and infrastructure can now take root as international standards.
Chair Yeom is an expert in the domestic information security standardization field who served for eight years as chair of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Telecommunication Standardization Sector (ITU-T) Study Group 17 on security. In 2016, he became the first person in Asia elected as the ITU-T SG17 international chair, and in 2022 he won reelection, serving two terms.
After his term ended, he has been serving as vice chair of the ITU-T TSAG, and to date he has led the adoption of more than 50 international information security standards, including the privacy information management system standard (ISO/IEC 27701). Most recently, through joint standardization work with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States, he established an international standard annex related to the decentralized identity verification system (DIVS).
Going forward, Chair Yeom plans to focus on strengthening the reflection of Korea's positions within international standardization bodies such as the ITU and ISO, supporting member companies' technological competitiveness and global expansion, and expanding cooperative networks with related organizations at home and abroad.
He said digital authentication is a core infrastructure in the era of an artificial intelligence (AI)-based digital economy and the foundation that underpins digital trust between countries, adding that the association will reflect user needs and, as a bridge linking industry and government, work to help member companies rise as leading players on the global stage.