Though outages to popular apps like KakaoTalk are increasingly disruptive, few regulators have so far enacted policies to improve platform resilience
The MSIT has directed that Kakao take steps to prevent disruptions and resolve outages more quickly
On 31 May 2024, South Korea’s Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) issued a direction to tech firm Kakao regarding its resilience planning in light of recent outages. Following three outages of the KakaoTalk social networking platform throughout May 2024, the firm will be required to submit an improvement action plan to MSIT within one month of the notice, as well as a follow-up report on the results of the corrective measures within three months. The MSIT raised concerns about two short but widespread outages, which lasted approximately six minutes and impacted 80% of users, as well as a longer, 54-minute outage, which impacted approximately 8% of users. In a statement included within the announcement, Minister of Science and ICT Lee Jong-ho noted that outages and disruptions to platforms such as KakaoTalk have grown beyond “inconveniences” for end users to now have profound impacts on the whole of Korean society and the economy.
Kakao must improve its internal processes to limit preventable disruptions caused by human error
In each of the three outages cited by the MSIT, some type of human error caused the disruption according to the investigation conducted by the Telecommunications Disaster Management Review Committee. As such, the MSIT has listed six requirements for Kakao’s improvement action plan, all of which relate to internal controls and management processes:
Strengthening testing procedures before major network updates;
Introducing a workflow management process;
Creating manuals and guidelines for use during disruptions and outages;
Establishing advanced monitoring systems for fault detection;
Standardising a “failure retrospective process”; and
Improving the process for notifying users of disruptions and outages.
Unlike a 2022 KakaoTalk outage that left users offline for eight hours due to a fire in a data centre, the MSIT appears to view these shorter and more frequent outages as avoidable and therefore within the responsibility for Kakao to prevent.
Regulators are paying attention to the resilience of platforms but have taken limited action thus far
Alongside a heightened focus on the resilience of mobile networks, a number of governments, including the US and in the EU, have also expressed concerns about the resilience and security of communications platforms and other software-based services. The popularity of so-called ‘super-apps’ – platforms offering multiple, all-encompassing digital services to large user bases, e.g. Kakaotalk – have resulted in widespread disruptions during outages. In addition, outages of specific services, including cloud computing provided by Google, Microsoft and Amazon Web Services, have had major impacts on social and economic activities in recent years. Though the MSIT currently stands out as one of the few regulators to take action to improve the resilience of communications platforms, certain peers, including Ofcom in the UK, have shared their views and policy positions on the matter. Ofcom considers that the potential emergence of super-apps in the UK could raise new concerns related to competition, privacy and consumers’ exposure to harm online, bringing forth potentially competing public policy objectives regulators will have to balance when addressing resilience.
