ATON said on the 5th that it signed a business agreement with the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA) to provide a pre-blocking system for malicious text messages.
Under the agreement, ATON will supply the pre-blocking system to internet text message senders and issue confirmation letters of adoption required for registration as special value-added common carriers.
Internet text message senders (special value-added common carriers) are businesses that send texts by connecting their text message sending systems to text relay operators. Businesses that resell or relay texts from financial companies, public institutions, and e-commerce firms fall under this category.
These businesses can register as special value-added common carriers with the Central Radio Management Service of the Ministry of Science and ICT only after obtaining sender qualification certification from the Korea Media and Communications Commission and implementing technical measures for the malicious text pre-blocking system. Businesses can build the pre-blocking system through a contract with ATON, and a confirmation letter of completion for adopting the blocking system issued by ATON is accepted as registration documents.
With the signing of the business agreement, the two sides will build a cooperative relationship to jointly respond to malicious texts by providing a system to share threat information such as malicious texts, establishing a joint response process for malicious texts, and sharing performance in implementing the agreement and cooperation outcomes.
The service supplied by ATON is the malicious URL and spam pre-blocking platform BUF (Bad URL Farm). BUF links to malicious URL information provided by KISA to check risk at the text sending stage. It detects malicious URLs in real time included not only in SMS but also in messengers such as KakaoTalk and Telegram, and in social media (SNS) such as Instagram and Facebook. By jointly determining prohibited words in the content and spam, it allows internet text message senders to meet pre-blocking requirements without building separate systems.
On Apr. 28, the government revised the Enforcement Decree of the Telecommunications Business Act to require internet text message senders to operate systems that automatically detect and block risk factors such as malicious URLs. The system changed from responding based on reports after texts reached users to filtering risk factors at the sending stage.
Accordingly, ATON has expanded beyond its DefendUs solution, which detects phishing and smishing on user devices, to a service that verifies at the text sending stage. Earlier, ATON signed a joint response agreement on phishing and smishing with KISA and the National Agricultural Cooperative Federation and linked KISA threat information to its solutions.
U Gil-su, CEO of ATON, said, "URLs used for smishing can disappear in a few days and be created anew, so it is hard to keep up with only the information secured by a single organization," and added, "We will combine proven detection capabilities with KISA threat information to help businesses meet strengthened requirements without disruption."