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Kim Myung-kuk, Head of AI Factory Business at SKT, poses with the CSAP certification in front of the Haein cluster. / Courtesy of SK Telecom

SK Telecom announced on July 6 that its artificial intelligence (AI) data center infrastructure, the Haein cluster, has obtained the Cloud Service Assurance Program (CSAP) certification supervised by the Korea Internet & Security Agency (KISA).

A cluster is a system that links multiple GPUs to process large-scale computations. The Haein cluster secured its certification under the Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) category, which verifies the security robustness of cloud services utilized by public institutions. With this achievement, SK Telecom becomes the first domestic AI cloud provider to receive CSAP certification for an infrastructure powered by Nvidia Blackwell graphics processing units (GPUs).

The Haein cluster integrates more than 1,000 Nvidia Blackwell GPUs into a single unified cluster. Strikingly, the infrastructure passed the rigorous security audits while actively handling live training workloads for a state-backed proprietary AI foundation model project, rather than being evaluated in an idle state. By meeting stringent public cloud security requirements—including network separation and data isolation—the Haein cluster has successfully laid the groundwork to aggressively scale its AI infrastructure footprint across the public and financial sectors.

Through this certification, SK Telecom is poised to strengthen its position in the domestic sovereign AI cloud market. Sovereign AI refers to an independent AI system built and operated by a nation using its own data and infrastructure. Unlike conventional, general-purpose clouds, Haein is specialized for AI training, inference, and heavy data processing. By serving as the core training infrastructure for the government's proprietary foundation model, the cluster has solidified its capability as a sovereign AI asset.

"The Haein cluster has established itself as a landmark sovereign AI infrastructure by becoming the first Blackwell GPU-powered AI cloud provider to achieve CSAP certification," stated Kim Myung-kuk, Head of AI Factory Business at SKT. "We will continue to expand our contribution within the public infrastructure domain going forward."

                                                                                                               Lee Ji-sun