In most offices today, wireless connectivity is simply assumed. Laptops move from desks to meeting rooms, and nobody thinks about the network. Financial institutions have been a notable exception. For banks and other financial firms, the network is a security perimeter first and a convenience second. That has kept many of them tethered to cables long after the rest of the corporate world went wireless.
That’s now changing in Korea. Samsung, SK Telecom, and Hana Financial Group have built the country’s first private 5G smart office in the financial sector, at Hana Financial Group’s new headquarters in Incheon, with Samsung as the sole vendor for the private 5G network. The project answers a question the industry has wrestled with for years: can a financial institution go
wireless without compromising security?
Why finance stayed wired
Financial institutions handle highly sensitive data, including customers’ credit and bank information, and operate under strict network-separation requirements. In that environment, Wi-Fi has largely been off-limits because of security concerns and cyber risks.
The result is a workplace tied to fixed desks and wired ports, where reorganizing a floor means rewiring it. That rigidity costs time and resources, and it’s becoming an obstacle to something more strategic: AI transformation (AX). AI tools are only as useful as employees’ access to the internal systems and data that feed them. Kim Goo-Young, Head of Enterprise Business Office at SK Telecom, noted that employees need secure, reliable access to those systems from anywhere for AI to become part of daily work.
Security built into every layer
The challenge was delivering mobility without giving up the protections that kept finance wired. Samsung’s private 5G solution does this with a multi-layered security architecture:
- Enhanced encryption: Data moving across the network is protected against interception.
- Firewall and DDoS protection: The network is shielded from unauthorized traffic and from attacks designed to overwhelm it.
- USIM-based authentication: Only authorized devices and registered users can connect, and each is verified through its SIM credentials.
Together, these measures give Hana Financial Group the complete isolation of a wired network with the convenience of wireless connectivity. That combination is what makes private 5G viable in a sector where Wi-Fi never was.
One network, many independent environments
Hana Financial Group is a group of affiliates, each with its own security policies and business requirements. Samsung’s 5G Standalone Core enabled all of them through network slicing, Which divides a single physical network into multiple virtual slices. Each subsidiary can get its own slice and an independent operating environment tailored to its needs, while the group gets the efficiency of shared infrastructure.
A full-stack deployment at scale
The smart office spans 16 floors and serves multiple affiliates and thousands of employees working from 5G-enabled laptops, tablets and mobile devices. Samsung delivered its full stack of solutions, including radios, baseband and cloud-native core, in the 4.7GHz mid-band spectrum dedicated to private 5G in Korea. Having a single vendor across the stack simplifies integration and gives the enterprise one accountable partner for performance and security.
For employees, the payoff is a seamless work environment anytime, anywhere in the building. For the organization, it means more efficient use of office space, less effort reconfiguring floors and a more agile way of working.
A blueprint for regulated industries
Finance is among the most demanding environments for enterprise networking, so success here signals that private 5G can meet the bar in other regulated sectors too. Samsung brings commercial private 5G experience across manufacturing, finance, construction, IT and more. Angelo Jeongho Park, Executive Vice President and Head of Strategic Sales, Networks Business at Samsung Electronics, described the aim as secure, tailored networks today that let businesses integrate AI-driven innovations.
For years, financial institutions accepted a trade-off: security or mobility, but not both. Hana Financial Group’s new headquarters shows that trade-off no longer has to exist. It also gives one of the most security-conscious industries a network foundation ready for the AI-driven work ahead.
