South Korean Government revised its Electronic Finance Supervisory Regulation in January and prepared a legal basis so that there can be services utilizing non-important and important financial information through cloud.
It basically presented a new standard for formation of financial Cloud system through ‘financial Cloud computing service guide’. However, there had yet to be any financial business that owns practical services based on Cloud and platforms.
KB Financial Group’s private cloud platform called ‘CLAYON’ was the first to initiate. KB Financial Group connected CLAYON to a public cloud platform called NHN ‘TOAST’ and it has secured strong expandability and a collaborative system between various types of businesses.
This is the first incident that broke down the boundary between ICT (Information Communication Technology) and finance through cloud technology. Establishment of a collaborative cloud camp between KB Financial Group and NHN is very meaningful.
Some other financial companies had tried to introduce cloud services partially. Although most of actual service operation was through cloud, most of development and distribution of services was through existing legacy system.
Although such hybrid method is easy with security control or control, there are significant limitations to outside companies and technology cooperation.
On the other hand, KB Financial Group’s CLAYON implements every infrastructure on a financial cloud platform based on past experiences from testbeds to promote startup companies. Subsequently, KB Financial Group has created a true open cloud platform by absorbing an outside ICT business’ cloud technology.
This means that KB Financial Group has created an independent infrastructure based on Cloud without having to go through existing IDC (Internet Data Center).
This infrastructure can reduce necessary time for a new service to be out on a market by at least three months and it can change existing water-pool development culture that develops and upgrades a system through a SI (System Integration) company into agile method.
NHN provides a tool needed to distribute necessary programs and source codes. Synergy between different industries acts perfectly.
“As cloud industry is developing rapidly, we are going to continue to expand our partnership with outside companies to provide safe transactions to our customers.” said Department Head Park Hyung-joo of KB Financial Holdings’ Digital Strategy Department. “We are going to include major services such as MVNO (Mobile Virtual Network Operator) platform that is designated as an innovative service into the cloud platform.”
Starting with partnership with NHN, KB Financial Group is going to complete its open cloud system with various offline businesses and it is also planning to introduce IoT (Internet of Things) banking voice analysis engine by working with O2O (Online to Online) services and Naver’s AI (Artificial Intelligence) Division.
KB Financial Group has also established a perfect security system that is the most sensitive issue within cloud industry. Security to infrastructures and stable service are vital to financial cloud system. Current banks and IDC centers of financial institutions apply strict physical network separation to protect sensitive financial information of their customers.
NHN’s comprehensive cloud solution Toast recently passed every CSP (Cloud Service Provider) safety evaluation by Financial Security Institute (FSI). CSP evaluation is a guideline that applies distinct characteristics of financial fields and it is an evaluation that must be passed by a financial company that is looking to convert itself into a cloud service provider. NHN had gone through 109 items for basic protection measure and 32 items for additional protection measure and it is the first business to receive 100% satisfaction.
KB Financial Group and NHN are planning to look for exception services in various fields. NHN’s Toast is a platform that has accumulated experiences from various IT services such as PAYCO (Finance), GODO Mall (shopping), and Hangame (game) and it has established trust within cloud markets where service access or security issue is sensitive. Besides KB Financial Group, NHN also has various customers such as TMON, Chungnam National University, Korea Communications Agency, and Thinkware.
“Our Toast platform is seen as a platform that is specialized for various areas such as finance, public, shopping, and game.” said Director Kim Dong-hoon of NHN Cloud Business Group. “Through collaboration with KB Financial Group, we are going to create an environment where developers can start developing right away without having to think about establishing or setting up infrastructures.”
Staff Reporter Gil, Jaeshik | osolgil@etnews.com