[Anchor]

The National Election Commission (NEC), which recently faced criticism over a shortage of ballot papers, has been found to have maintained lax security protocols for its data center, a core facility. It was discovered that 14 visitor access cards were never returned. Furthermore, it was revealed that these cards remained active and could have been used to enter the data center until the NEC belatedly identified the issue and revoked their access privileges.

Reporter Son Hyeong-an has the story.

[Reporter]

The National Election Commission headquarters in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, was designated as a Grade A national critical facility, the highest security level, starting December 10 of last year.

The data center, which houses the election information system, is located on the second floor of the building.

This is the list of unreturned data center visitor access cards obtained by SBS through the National Assembly.

On December 31 of last year, the NEC revoked the access privileges for 10 data center visitor cards, including those with serial numbers 48 and 49.

These cards were primarily issued to external contractors after October of last year. The NEC blocked their access only after realizing that the cards had not been returned even after the authorized access period had expired.

It was also revealed that the problematic access cards had been configured to remain valid through this year. This indicates a significant security loophole, as the access privileges remained active until the NEC belatedly noticed they had not been returned.

There is no basic information, such as the names of the recipients, recorded in the digital system, and the manual visitor logs are inaccurate. As a result, it is currently difficult to determine who these cards were issued to or for what duration.

The NEC also admitted that, in addition to the 10 cards it belatedly deactivated at the end of last year, the whereabouts of one card issued this year and three spare cards remain unknown.

In total, 14 visitor access cards for the data center remain unrecovered.

The NEC explained that visitor access cards do not provide access to core facilities inside the data center, such as the server room, and that separate authentication is required to log into the security system from a PC terminal to access the election information system.

An internal NEC source who spoke to SBS in a written interview said, "Even though access cards were not returned, the commission continued to issue new ones, essentially rotating them," adding, "They failed to properly manage even basic building access."

[Lee Man-hee / People Power Party Lawmaker: It is truly deplorable that access cards for the data center were not properly managed and that multiple instances of loss occurred. I believe institutional improvements are absolutely necessary.]

The National Election Commission acknowledged the failure in access card management and stated, "Moving forward, we will verify the status of issued cards on a weekly and monthly basis and strengthen security for data center access."

(Video by Shin Dong-hwan and Kim Nam-seong | Video Editing by Oh Young-taek | Graphics by Jegal Chan and Jang Chae-woo | Data provided by the office of Rep. Lee Man-hee of the People Power Party)