As hacking and data leak incidents have continued in the financial sector, the fintech industry is moving to strengthen security in advance by finding and blocking vulnerabilities rather than only responding after incidents occur. The aim is to prevent similar breaches from spreading to the fintech sector through steps such as blocking suspicious IP addresses, analysing past access records and checking IT assets exposed to the outside.

The Korea Fintech Industry Association on Thursday held a meeting at One IFC in Seoul titled "Sharing Session on Fintech Sector Response Cases Related to Financial Sector Breach Incidents" and shared recent cases and response measures by fintech firms.

The event was organised after a series of breach incidents, including hacking and information leaks, in the financial sector. It aimed to review the security systems of electronic financial business operators and fintech companies and prevent further damage.

The Financial Services Commission also asked the fintech sector to conduct checks using the Financial Supervisory Service's IT security self-inspection checklist and to re-examine incident response procedures. It also stressed the need for the entire sector to share real-world incident response experience and security know-how regardless of company size.

Security and IT officials from electronic financial business operators and member companies of the association attended the session. Discussions focused on the FSS IT security self-inspection checklist, the causes of recent financial sector breach incidents and the direction of measures, cases of checking and responding to suspicious IPs, and steps to prevent similar incidents.

The FSS compared and explained recent cases in which electronic financial business operators succeeded or failed in defending against hacking. Participants also discussed measures that can be used immediately in the sector, including applying additional authentication to access through external routes such as merchants.

Based on recent breach cases, participants shared practical pre-emptive check items, including blocking attacker IPs, reviewing past access records, checking externally exposed IT assets and service vulnerabilities, strengthening access controls, and detecting and monitoring abnormal access.

The association plans to continue sharing information on breach threats and security with member companies and to support sector-wide pre-emptive security checks in connection with the financial authorities' inspection direction.

Kim Jong-hyun (김종현), chairman of the Korea Fintech Industry Association, said recent breach incidents in the financial sector are not an issue limited to a specific company or sector but one that is directly linked to trust in financial services as a whole.