[DigitalToday reporter Seul-gi Son]

Fasoo, a data security company with 26 years of history, has changed its name to "Fasoo AI" and is moving to become an AI transformation (AX) solutions company.

Fasoo AI CEO Gyu-gon Cho (조규곤) said at a press briefing held on April 15 at the Fairmont Ambassador in Yeouido, "It started as Fasoo.com and changed to Fasoo 7 years ago, and now it is changing again to Fasoo AI." He added, "We built the company in the dot-com era and have made the transition well into the AI era."

What Fasoo has focused on is "Sustainable AX (Sustainable AI Transformation)." It aims to help companies make an agent-centric shift that can deliver actual return on investment (ROI). Fasoo divided AX into three stages: stage 1 (AI assistant), using AI as a supporting tool; stage 2 (Business-ready agent), where agents do work and people supervise; and stage 3 (Agent orchestration), where multiple agents collaborate.

The goal it set out through this is higher productivity. Cho said, "Many companies remain in stage 1 and think they are using AI well." He added, "But if it is used only at the assistant level, productivity does not increase from a company standpoint." Global IT research firm Gartner forecast that more than 50 percent of companies will fail to realise measurable business value from AI investments through 2028. Cho added, "If they do not move up quickly to the agent stage, the results will not be good."

Along with realising ROI, he also stressed risk management. Cho said, "An agent is an insider that has all internal information," adding that "it is more complex than existing insider threats in that you cannot know what will be leaked." On hacker threats using AI, he warned that "the scale and speed are on a different level from the past."

On concerns that Anthropic's recently released Claude Mythos could affect the existing security market, he said, "This kind of threat was already foretold before," adding, "The market is only now starting to recognise it in reality, and for us it is good timing."

That is because the two products operate in different areas. While Mythos is a tool that finds vulnerabilities in software code, Fasoo AI's core business of data access control and privilege management deals with who can access which information. Cho said, "It has little impact on data and document security," while adding, "It will have a considerable impact on the application security area." The app security product Sparrow is being developed to respond proactively to such changes.

Fasoo AI also unveiled three platforms to support AX.

"Ellm" is an AX platform for building agents. It is sold on a subscription basis. It released version 2.0 late last year with built-in retrieval-augmented generation (RAG), agent orchestration and security features. Cho said, "How quickly you can incorporate a new LLM when it comes out is the core of platform competitiveness." He cited the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST) as a customer. Researchers adopted it to automatically draft project proposals.

"Wrapsody" is an unstructured data platform. It handles the cleansing and management of data needed for AI training and agent integration. Cho said, "Unstructured data differs by department and the permission relationships are complex, making it difficult to connect directly to an LLM," adding, "Solving this is the practical starting point of AI transformation."

"Sparrow" is an application security product. It combines an AI engine with static application security testing (SAST), dynamic application security testing (DAST) and software composition analysis (SCA), and it is researching ways to enhance vulnerability detection using AI.

◆ U.S. unit to be reorganised into Symbologic...targets profitability by late next year

Fasoo AI will reorganise its U.S. unit, FasooLink, into Symbologic, an AX consulting specialist. It will be an organisation combining the strengths of Fasoo and U.S. AI consulting firm Konsilix, staffed by people formerly at Google and Amazon. Fasoo AI Chief Financial Officer Ji-su Lee (이지수) said, "Fasoo will take a majority stake, and because we play an important role in management decision-making, we will continue to consolidate it in accounting," adding, "Symbologic's profit and loss structure will flow straight into ours." Administrative procedures are under way.

Its global targets are existing customers in the short term and mid-sized companies in the long term. While Palantir and others focus on large companies, Fasoo aims to target the mid-market. Cho said, "Big players like Palantir are hitting the enterprise market hard, but the mid-market is effectively empty," adding, "We see an opportunity there."

Symbologic is currently posting a short-term net loss of 2.0 billion won. It is targeting a turnaround to profitability by late next year.

Cho also dismissed talk of an AI bubble, saying, "AI is not a bubble." He said, "If it were a bubble, technological progress would stagnate and investment would fall, but now it is the opposite," adding, "This change will not end within 1 or 2 years. You have to design a sustainable transformation to survive."