Financial Institutions to Use Cloud Software on Internal Networks as Network Separation Regulations Eased

Financial Services Commission and Financial Supervisory Service Revise Enforcement Rules for Electronic Financial Supervision

Financial institutions and electronic financial service providers will now be able to use cloud-based administrative management and work support services within their internal networks without having to undergo a separate screening for innovative financial services.

The Financial Services Commission and the Financial Supervisory Service announced on the 20th that they have completed amendments to the ‘Enforcement Rules of the Electronic Financial Supervision Regulation’ to this effect.

The core of this amendment is that, under the condition that certain security rules are observed, an exception to the network separation regulation will be allowed, enabling financial institutions to use cloud-based software as a service (SaaS) within their internal networks. Until now, the obligation to maintain network separation had limited the use of SaaS services, leading to inefficiencies that have been pointed out.

However, considering concerns over the leakage of personal information, exceptions to network separation will not be permitted when processing users' unique identification information or personal credit information. In addition, when using pseudonymized information, SaaS can only be utilized after undergoing the same innovative financial service designation process as before.

Institutional mechanisms to ensure information security controls will also become mandatory. Financial institutions must ▲ use only SaaS solutions that have been evaluated by incident response agencies such as the Financial Security Institute, ▲ establish and comply with protective measures for access devices (such as computers and mobile devices), and ▲ assess the implementation of information security controls once every six months and report the results to the internal information security committee.

With this system improvement, the adoption and utilization of SaaS in various work areas such as document editing, video conferencing, collaboration, and performance management is expected to accelerate. As a result, both internal and external collaboration will be strengthened, work efficiency and productivity are expected to improve, and the burden of IT operations will be eased. Furthermore, data-driven decision-making will become easier, and internal management systems are also expected to be operated in a more systematic and standardized manner.

An official from the Financial Services Commission stated, "Following SaaS, we also plan to actively communicate with financial institutions regarding generative AI services and to promptly pursue the application of network separation regulation exceptions," adding, "We will continue to innovate security management systems in the financial sector to ensure that network separation regulations do not become an obstacle to the development of AI services."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.