SK Telecom will join forces with major domestic AI and security companies to develop an AI foundation model specialised in cybersecurity.

SKT said on Aug. 27 it formed a consortium with Upstage, 9 domestic security companies, universities and the Korea Information Security Industry Association (KISIA) and submitted an application to participate in the Ministry of Science and ICT's project to develop a 'cybersecurity-specialised AI foundation model'.

SKT and Upstage teamed up after passing the second-stage evaluation of the government's 'independent AI foundation model' project. SKT, as the consortium's lead company, will oversee the overall project and develop the security-focused AI model with Upstage.

The two companies plan to develop a model specialised for security based on the 'A.X K' family and the 'Solar Open' family they have been developing through the independent AI foundation model project.

The model will be combined with AI agents and used to automate processes from cyber threat detection to analysis and blocking and response measures. With up to 10,000 threat alerts a day occurring at domestic security operations centres (SOC), it will reduce the monitoring burden stemming from a shortage of security personnel.

The SKT security AI foundation model consortium includes Upstage and 9 domestic security companies: SK Shieldus, SecurI, AhnLab, Igloo Corporation, RaonSecure, SmartM2M, AIM Intelligence, Genians and Piolink.

Each company will use data secured from security monitoring and network, endpoint and authentication operations in the field to train the model, then verify the developed model again on site to enhance performance.

SKT will also use its operational experience from monitoring telecoms infrastructure around the clock. SKT's chief information security officer (CISO) organisation operates directly under the chief executive officer (CEO). The integrated security centre under ISO has 129 dedicated staff. Including the chief privacy officer (CPO) organisation, security-related staff total 149 people.

It also separately operates a white-hat hacker team called the 'Red Team' that checks vulnerabilities from an attacker's perspective. SKT plans to build security-focused AI that reflects domestic cyber threats, Korean-language security data and the domestic regulatory environment, to expand automation of security monitoring and raise technological self-reliance in cybersecurity.

Academia and an association are also participating. The industry-academic cooperation groups of Korea University and Soongsil University will independently verify model performance and safety, separating verification from the developers. They will also train specialised personnel in security and AI convergence. KISIA will promote the spread of development outcomes across industry and linkage with training for employees.

Dong-yeon Cho (조동연), head of AI Convergence at SKT, said, "We will build a practical security AI system by embedding data and know-how from the security field into homegrown AI," and added, "We will broaden the security AI ecosystem so it can compete globally with capabilities built together by industry, academia and research."