While South Korea’s Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) continues to deal with massive breaches in the financial sector, the Board of Audit and Inspection of Korea will now be investigating them:
The Board of Audit and Inspection of Korea began an inspection of the country`s financial watchdog agency Wednesday over a large-scale theft of customer information from some of local financial institutions. The state inspectors plan to investigate whether the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) properly supervised financial institutions after some local credit card companies had 140 million cases of customer information stolen and sold to marketing firms in the country`s largest-ever data theft case. The move came after civic groups` petition last month for an inspection.
After taking office in March last year, Choi Soo-hyun, chairman of the FSS, failed to take proper follow-up measures after a theft of 140,000 cases of customer data from Citibank Korea and Standard Chartered Bank Korea, letting a much bigger theft happen. The FSS is responsible for the latest data theft case because it went no further than sending a letter of warning to financial companies involved in the incident. Nevertheless, the FSS rejected a civil petition for an inspection into the companies last week, saying that there is “nothing exceptionally new or major” in the case.
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