Major banks plan bigger cybersecurity budgets for 2027

Major Korean banks are preparing to raise their information security spending next year following a wave of suspected artificial intelligence (AI) agent-driven cyberattacks and data breaches across the financial sector, industry officials said Sunday. Some intend to commit at least 100 billion won ($75 million) each to bolstering cyber defenses. The lenders have also launched urgent inspections and taken certain services offline to address a recently disclosed security flaw in PHP, a programming language used to build applications that process requests on web servers, including user logins and online posts. Hana Bank aims to earmark more than 100 billion won for information security next year, an increase of more than 50 percent from this year. Priorities include developing AI-powered defenses against cyberattacks and hiring security specialists. NH NongHyup Bank is weighing a budget increase of around 20 percent, which would bring its spending to approximately 100 billion won. KB Kookmin Bank has already announced plans to set aside more than 100 billion won for security next year. At Wo