SK Telecom is expanding its AI cloud security business in cooperation with global security company F5. It plans to strengthen competitiveness by taking charge of not only sales of F5 security solutions but also customer deployment and operations.

SKT said on Sept. 16 it signed a partnership with F5 to strengthen cooperation in the AI cloud security business.

Under the agreement, SKT will pursue a dual partnership. It will act as a value-added reseller (VAR) by adding its own services and technologies to F5 solutions, and also as a managed service provider (MSP) managing customers' IT environments using F5 solutions.

F5 is a global application and API security company headquartered in Seattle in the United States. It operates the software-as-a-service (SaaS) security platform F5 Distributed Cloud, which protects applications and APIs across multiple cloud environments.

SKT, in particular, was selected as the first domestic MSP partner for F5's Distributed Cloud solution. It will be able to provide enterprise customers with services from deployment to management and operations, rather than stopping at selling security products.

Through the cooperation, SKT will secure cloud security capabilities including a web application firewall (WAF), API security, defence against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and defence against bot attacks. It plans to use them to protect applications and APIs in an integrated way for companies that use multiple clouds.

SKT will expand its business scope to an integrated managed service that provides everything from infrastructure build-out to operations and security by combining its existing AI cloud infrastructure operations capabilities with F5 security technology. It will also link the effort with its existing infrastructure businesses such as data centres, GPUaaS and telecom lines.

Heo Min-hoe (허민회), head of AI cloud at SKT, said SKT is expanding its enterprise AI infrastructure business based on its AI cloud capabilities and infrastructure assets such as AI data centres, GPUaaS and lines. He said combining them with F5 technology and capabilities would allow SKT to propose strengthened solutions to large enterprise customers.