Hong Beom-sik (홍범식), CEO of LG Uplus, said a controversy over the design of subscriber identity numbers (IMSI) became a chance to improve the company’s security awareness and readiness.

Hong met reporters after a meeting between Vice Prime Minister Bae Kyung-hoon, who also serves as minister of science and ICT, and the three telecom companies at the Korea Science and Technology Center on April 9. "It is true that we were not fully aware of the IMSI issue," he said. "Now there has been an important shift in internal perspective."

LG Uplus has previously been found to have assigned IMSIs using customers’ actual mobile phone numbers. The leakage of an IMSI value does not immediately lead to hacking, but it is generally standard practice to apply randomisation because combining it with other information can pose a potential security threat.

"Through several recent cases in the industry, we have come to recognise the importance of security more deeply," Hong said. "We have shifted to the view that we need security standards far higher than national requirements or industry standards. We believe we must raise security to a level customers can actually feel."

LG Uplus is carrying out broad security-strengthening work in response to the incident. From April 13, it will sequentially replace SIMs and carry out updates for all customers.

"Overall, we judge that both our level of security awareness and our readiness have improved significantly compared with the past," he said. "We will prepare thoroughly to minimise inconvenience to the public."