"Police Agency Operating System Vulnerable to Disasters and Emergencies"

Assemblyman Park Jae-ho "Measures Needed to Ensure Stable Security Services Even During Disasters and Emergencies"

Jaeho Park, member of the Democratic Party of Korea.

[Asia Economy Reporter Lee Gwan-joo] It has been pointed out that a significant number of systems operated by the National Police Agency are vulnerable to various accidents, disasters, and calamities.

According to the 'Status of Disaster Recovery System (DRS) Construction at the National Police Agency' data received by Park Jae-ho, a member of the National Assembly's Public Administration and Security Committee from the Democratic Party of Korea, only 2 out of 77 operating systems at the National Police Agency have disaster recovery systems in place.

The disaster recovery system serves as a kind of 'backup center' that prevents the National Police Agency's operating systems from being paralyzed by natural disasters or cyberterrorism. Without a disaster recovery system, it is difficult to fully restore operations within a set time, and some data is likely to be lost or damaged.

In response, the National Police Agency stated, "Instead of establishing a disaster recovery system, we conduct regular backups," but Park pointed out that according to the related manual, the backed-up data is not distributed to different locations, rendering the backup essentially meaningless.

There have been several cases where problems occurred in public institutions' operating systems. In January this year, the Social Security Information Service's own server went down, causing the electronic entry log system to fail, and in 2012, the Korea Railroad Corporation's ticket reservation system was halted due to a computer failure, suspending ticketing operations for about 2 hours and 30 minutes.

Park said, "Since many systems operated and managed by the National Police Agency are closely related to the lives, safety, and public security administration of the people, if the National Police Agency fails to perform its role due to various disasters and calamities, it could cause serious social risks,” and emphasized, "measures must be prepared to provide stable public security services even in disaster and emergency situations."