Ministry says Korean Web sites aren’t secure

Almost all of the Korean companies that collect or manage customers’ personal information are not paying enough attention to security on their Web sites, the Information Ministry said yesterday. The ministry said that out of 90,372 companies and organizations that deal with people’s private information, less than 3.8 percent had secure servers as of the end of April, making it easy for hackers to tap into their information. Secure servers are Web servers that support major security protocols; the servers encrypt and decrypt messages to prevent a third party from tampering with them. For instance, making an online payment from a secure Web server ensures that the user’s personal information, including credit card numbers or personal identification numbers, can be translated into a secret code that is difficult to crack. By sector, shopping malls were the least equipped with secure servers, at 1.4 percent. Education-related Web sites (2.5 percent) and travel and lodging Web sites (3 percent) also had a low secure server installment rate. About 11 percent of Internet portals and game Web sites had secure servers. The finance sector had the highest secure server installment rate in their related Web sites, with a 91.5 percent rate. The ministry said it would introduce a three-part plan to raise Korea’s secure server distribution rate to a top 20 global ranking by the end of this year and a top five ranking by 2008. According to an index created last year at the World Economic Forum, Korea ranked 43rd in terms of secure servers. by Wohn Dong-hee