[Editorial] When Information Security Depends on One Company

Yun Seok Gu, director of the National Cyber Security Center, is imploring Microsoft to continue its maintenance of Windows 98 and Windows Me. Microsoft says that as of July of next year it is going to stop developing security patches for Windows 98, which is seeing less and less users. The concern is that when that happens, computers using Windows 98 could experience holes in security. Some 3.50 million computers in Korea, or 13 percent, use Windows 98, and a considerable number of those are in government offices.

Granted, just because maintenance and upgrades won't be happening any more does not mean there will immediately be a massive state of chaos, but it is more than your serious situation when Korea's information security depends on the policies of a single American company. This is a company that exercises dominating influence on the worldwide personal computer market, and Korea is not unique in finding it difficult to establish its own independent security measures because of things like copyright issues. It is something to be taken seriously when the situation has come to the point where the man responsible for a country's information security goes directly to the company to appeal for something to be done, because information security is now directly related to national security.

The fundamental reason things have come to this because of shortsighted government policy that has not seen the situation ahead of time and sought to lower the country's dependence on Microsoft. Korea has used Microsoft's products without thinking twice about it, for the reason that they have been easy to use. Computers that don't use Windows can't even access online government services and cyber banking sites.

Even if it only begins now, the government needs to work harder at reducing the tilt towards a single operating system, by increasing the use of other operating systems such as the open source software Linux. It needs to remember that it's not simply about reducing dependence on a specific company. It's about the very important work of security independent national information security technology.

The Hankyoreh, 18 October 2005.

[Translations by Seoul Selection (PMS)]