[Edaily Reporter Han Kwangbeom ] Naver (NAVER(035420)) Cloud has teamed up with LG CNS (#LG CNS) to bid for the "Development of a Cybersecurity-Specialized AI Foundation Model" project led by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National IT Industry Promotion Agency (NIPA).
Naver Cloud announced on the 27th that it will participate in this project by forming a joint consortium with LG Corp. Under the theme of “Development of an AI Foundation Model for the Internalization of National Cybersecurity Capabilities,” the two companies plan to leverage their proprietary “full-stack” technology—encompassing AI models, infrastructure, security, and data—to develop a unique model optimized for the domestic security environment.
The Naver Cloud–LG Corp. consortium highlights the internalization of technology—free from external dependencies—and real-world operational experience as its core strengths. Naver Cloud possesses expertise in commercially deploying and operating foundation models directly tailored for closed networks and on-premises environments in sectors requiring high security standards, such as the nuclear and financial industries. This aligns with the essential requirements of national security initiatives, which mandate securing data sovereignty in environments isolated from external networks.
Combined with practical monitoring and defense experience gained from safeguarding Naver services, as well as data isolation technology based on the Public Cloud Security Certification (CSAP), the consortium plans to implement models that can be deployed immediately in the field.
LG Corp. will also contribute its specialized cybersecurity organizations—including Red Team, Blue Team, and AI Security Team—as well as its experience in AI Transformation (AX) projects across various industries. The company plans to enhance model training by leveraging data specialized for telecommunications networks from group affiliates such as LG Uplus, and to improve the model’s sophistication through validation.
This Naver Cloud consortium brings together a total of 33 industry, academic, and research institutions, including LG Corp., specialized security firms, major universities, and research and public institutions. The consortium explains that it has established a system capable of independently completing the entire process required for developing security-specialized AI models.
Kim Yu-won, CEO of Naver Cloud, emphasized, “As cyber threats become increasingly sophisticated through the use of AI, internalizing defense systems with proprietary AI technology is key to national security,” adding, “We will develop ‘sovereign security AI’—which best understands the domestic cyber threat landscape—to elevate national security capabilities to the next level.”
Meanwhile, this initiative is a national project led by the Ministry of Science and ICT to counter cyber threats that are becoming increasingly sophisticated due to the proliferation of generative AI and autonomous Agent AI agents. The government plans to select one final project team in early September from among the Naver Cloud Consortium and the SKTelecom Consortium—both of which submitted proposals—following a review of document eligibility and presentation evaluations.
The selected team will receive 256 B200 GPUs (32 nodes)—NVIDIA’s latest AI accelerators—for a period of 10 months. The government plans to release an interim model five months after the project begins and, upon completion of development, make the final results available on an open-source basis to support the AI transformation of the domestic security industry as a whole.
