Restoration Rate at 15.6%: 21 First-Grade Systems Recovered
Contractor Selected for Transfer to Daegu Center
Internal Cloud for Civil Servants Likely Impossible to Restore
15.6% of the administrative systems that had been paralyzed due to the fire at the National Information Resources Service have been restored. Among the systems that have not yet been restored, 49% have alternative measures in place. However, the 'G-Drive,' which civil servants use as a work cloud, has been lost without backup, making recovery virtually impossible.
Kim Minjae, First Deputy Chief of the Central Disaster and Safety Countermeasures Headquarters (Vice Minister of the Ministry of the Interior and Safety), held a briefing on the afternoon of October 1 and announced, "As of 2 p.m. today, out of 647 systems, a total of 101 systems have been restored, including 21 first-grade work systems." The restoration rate is 15.6%.
Among the systems that have not been restored, 267 systems (49%) now have alternative measures in place. Of the remaining 279 systems, about 150 systems-excluding those for internal use-are still completely paralyzed with no bypass options. Hwang Myungseok, Director General for Government Innovation at the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, stated, "Each agency is making every effort to secure alternative measures."
The government is accelerating the restoration of systems. The number of personnel assigned to remove dust from the fifth-floor data center, where the fire occurred, has been increased from 20 to 50. For the 96 systems in the 7-1 data center, which suffered the most direct damage, the process of transferring them to the public-private partnership (PPP) cloud at the National Information Resources Daegu Center has begun. The government has signed a contract with NHN Cloud, one of the companies located in the Daegu Center PPP. Kim explained, "It was selected considering sufficient equipment and rapid restoration, among other factors."
It was further explained that once the infrastructure for each 'cloud zone' is completed, the restoration speed will increase significantly. Lee Sangmin, Director of Operations Planning at the National Information Resources Service, said, "In technical terms, the 'cloud zones' are divided, and once the environment for one cloud zone to operate services is ready, the speed of restoration will improve dramatically. If one zone is set up as early as this Saturday (October 4), services will begin to be restored steadily from then on."
Internal Cloud for Civil Servants Difficult to Restore
Among the 96 systems, the 'G-Drive' has been confirmed to be virtually impossible to restore. The G-Drive is an internal cloud storage space used by civil servants, similar to how the private sector uses cloud services to reduce storage on mobile phones and PCs. Lim Jeonggyu, Director General for Public Services at the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, stated, "We believe that the G-Drive has been completely lost and is impossible to restore. However, we still need to investigate further to see if any part of it remains."
The reason the G-Drive, unlike other services, has been deemed 'irrecoverable' is because no backup was performed. All systems within the National Information Resources are backed up and data is distributed either to other equipment within the same center or to a physically separated, dedicated backup center. More than 60% of key system data is distributed online daily to a separate backup center, and most data is distributed offline at the end of each month. The Ministry of the Interior and Safety explained, "The G-Drive uses large-capacity, low-performance storage, which makes external backup difficult."
Since most central government agencies have been using the G-Drive since 2017, the amount of lost data is presumed to be significant. In particular, the Ministry of Personnel Management stores all work information not on PCs but on the G-Drive. Other ministries reportedly use both PCs and the G-Drive. Regarding this, Director Lim stated, "Documents related to approvals and reports are stored not only on the G-Drive but also, as a rule, in the Onnara system, so we believe that all final government reports and similar documents are preserved."
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