Naver accelerated efforts to strengthen its security capabilities by increasing information security investment to the 66 billion won range last year.
According to Naver's information security status posted on the information security disclosure portal of the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) on the 30th, Naver's information security institutional sector investment last year totaled 66.03414 billion won. That was up 10.76893 billion won from 55.26521 billion won a year earlier, a 19.5% growth rate.
However, information security accounted for 4.5% of total information technology (IT) investment, the same as a year earlier. This was due to Naver's IT investment reaching 1.4581 trillion won last year. The company said that, as an IT corporations based on online services, its technology investment aggregates is large, and because it operates its in-house developed security systems through multiple solutions, the actual security input is larger than the amount spent on external product purchases captured by disclosure standards.
Security staffing also increased. Naver's dedicated information security staff rose 17.7%, from 130.8 in 2024 to 154 last year. Of that, internal dedicated staff increased from 55.0 to 60.1, and outsourced staff expanded from 75.8 to 93.9. The share of dedicated information security staff within total IT personnel rose 0.5 percentage points, from 4.3% to 4.8%.
In this disclosure, Naver also revealed 34 information security activities for user protection and the spread of the security ecosystem. Key activities included operating a bug bounty program for vulnerability reporting and securing CNA authority to issue Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) identifiers in-house.
The information security disclosure system is a mechanism to disclose corporations' security investment, dedicated personnel, certifications, and protection activities to help users choose services and to encourage corporations' information security investment. This year's disclosure obligations were set based on business field, revenue, and number of users, and disclosure status and statistics can be checked through the KISA portal.
Kakao's information security investment also showed an upward trend. Kakao invested 34.04339 billion won in the information security institutional sector last year. That was up 8.8% from 31.32705 billion won a year earlier. In both investment size and growth rate, Naver outpaced Kakao.