How a Social Network Secures Its Most Sensitive Data

My name is SeungJin Lee, and I’m the CISO at LINE. I’m basically responsible for every cybersecurity incident, every cybersecurity breach, and privacy as well.

Over a hundred million people use our messenger. It’s really popular in Asian countries, especially Japan and Taiwan. LINE also has many services, like games and social media. You can also sign up for insurance or buy stocks. We’re building our own blockchain as well, and we’re trying to make NFTs, so there are a lot of things there.

Our most sensitive data is a conversation between people. And people have really highly sensitive conversations on our messenger. They also send pictures, clips, and things like that.

Fundamentally, people like to know someone’s secret. That might be one of the reasons why the bad guys are trying to hack LINE. In the worst cases, one of your networks could be breached by hackers. And once hackers breach your network, they can do lateral movements, like jumping into the other networks, and they can go to the databases and steal all the sensitive data. So limiting the hackers is really important.

If you use Akamai Guardicore Segmentation, you can easily isolate some devices or even networks from the other assets. So the quality of our product is really important for us, especially security. Everyone is using a different operating system and different software. So it’s really impossible to know which device is vulnerable. I think isolating some devices or networks in a quick way is really one of the fundamental things for security.

From my experience, I’ve spent a lot of time with the engineers from Akamai Guardicore. I believe that Akamai Guardicore has a strong team, especially in cybersecurity and R&D. We see much potential from their products.

With the LINE messaging app as the cornerstone, LINE Corporation’s business encompasses development and operation of a wide range of mobile-first services — including communication, content, and entertainment — and advertising, as well as new businesses in fintech, AI, and other domains. Under its corporate mission of “Closing the Distance,” LINE Corporation strives to bring people around the world closer to each other, to information, and to services.

Akamai powers and protects life online. Leading companies worldwide choose Akamai to build, deliver, and secure their digital experiences — helping billions of people live, work, and play every day. Akamai Connected Cloud, a massively distributed edge and cloud platform, puts apps and experiences closer to users and keeps threats farther away. Learn more about Akamai’s cloud computing, security, and content delivery solutions at akamai.com and akamai.com/blog, or follow Akamai Technologies on Twitter and LinkedIn.