SKT assembles AI security team to build cyber defense model

SK Telecom is assembling an unusual alliance of artificial intelligence (AI) developers, cybersecurity companies and universities to build an AI model designed to defend Korea against increasingly complex cyberthreats. SKT said Thursday that it had submitted an application for a government-led project to develop an AI foundation model specialized in cybersecurity, joining forces with Upstage, nine security companies, Korea University, Soongsil University and the Korea Information Security Industry Association (KISIA). The consortium brings together two of the three teams that recently passed the second-stage evaluation of the government’s independent AI foundation model project, with SKT and Upstage contributing their respective model-development expertise. The companies plan to develop a security-focused model based on SKT’s A.X K family and Upstage’s Solar Open models, then combine it with AI agents that could automate tasks from detecting threats to responding to them. SKT said the system will be trained and tested using data and expertise from real-world security operations, cr