Naver Cloud has been selected as the final operator in the Ministry of Science and ICT's (MSIT) call for proposals to develop a "Cybersecurity-Specialized AI Foundation Model."

The MSIT announced today (the 3rd) that the decision was made following presentation evaluations for two participating operators (consortiums), Naver Cloud and SK Telecom.

During the presentation evaluations, an evaluation panel composed of external experts in AI and cybersecurity comprehensively assessed the technical capabilities and development experience, the excellence and feasibility of development strategies, technologies, and goals, as well as marketability and ripple effects, based on the business plans and presentation materials submitted by each consortium.

The Naver Cloud consortium received favorable reviews for forming a large-scale industry-academia-research consortium equipped with exceptional technical prowess and development experience, as well as for its robust development strategies and goals, which include configuring multiple agents and harnesses.

As the lead organization, the Naver Cloud consortium includes a total of 32 institutions, involving security and AI companies such as LG CNS, LG Uplus, Sands Lab, and Estsecurity, alongside major universities and research institutes including KAIST, Seoul National University, Korea University, and POSTECH.

As the executing organization, the consortium will be supported with 256 B200 GPUs (32 nodes) for 10 months starting this month, with the provision of the remaining 5 months subject to a mid-term evaluation after the first 5 months.

The MSIT plans to sign an agreement with the selected operator within September and embark on the development of the cybersecurity-specialized model, while immediately forming a working-level consultative body to drive prompt results.

This project aims to secure an independent domestic security-specialized AI model in response to increasingly sophisticated cybersecurity threats driven by the advancement of high-performance AI models. The call for team applications ran for a month from July 22 to August 21.

(Photo provided by NVIDIA, Yonhap News)