Naver Cloud said on Wednesday it will form a consortium with LG CNS to take part in the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National IT Industry Promotion Agency's project to develop a specialised AI foundation model in the cybersecurity field.

Under the theme of developing an AI foundation model to internalise national cyber security capabilities, the consortium plans to develop a cybersecurity-specialised model spanning AI models and infrastructure, security and data.

Naver Cloud will draw on its experience applying foundation models to closed-network and on-premises environments in highly regulated areas such as nuclear power and finance. It will focus on enabling operation of large language models in environments isolated from external networks and on minimising external leakage of data.

It will also use security monitoring and defence experience accumulated through operating Naver services, along with data encryption and isolation technology based on public cloud security certification, known as CSAP, in developing the model.

LG CNS will be responsible for model development and validation based on its security specialist organisations, including red team, blue team and an AI security team, and its experience in industry-specific AI transformation projects. Telecommunications network-related data held by group affiliates such as LG Uplus will also be used to train the model.

A total of 33 industry-academia-research organisations will participate in the consortium, led by Naver Cloud, including LG CNS, LG AI Research, LG Uplus, Logpresso, SANDS Lab, Sparrow, S2W, ESTsecurity, Theori Korea, Korea Aerospace Industries, Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power, Financial Security Institute, Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, Seoul National University, Korea University and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology.

Kim Yuwon (김유원), chief executive of Naver Cloud, said cyber threats are becoming more sophisticated by using AI and that defence systems also need to internalise independent AI technology. He said the company will develop security AI specialised for the domestic cyber threat environment.