The Financial Express
By Abhishek Mitra
The advent of cloud storage and IoT made data accumulation, storage, and handling much more efficient regarding time, accuracy, and overall processing. But with this arises potential cybercrime threats and a stark need for robust cybersecurity systems to safeguard sensitive consumer data. The arrangement of technologies, protocols, and methods to protect consumer data against attacks, damage, malware, viruses, hacking, data theft, and unauthorised access to networks, devices, programs, and data, is the primary objective of deploying cybersecurity across banking institutions.
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In today’s contemporary context, online banking provides customers with an easy and fast way to conduct banking operations, allowing them to avoid visiting banks’ physical branches. Moreover, as more and more customers conduct their banking operations remotely, banks can decrease the number of physical branches and reduce maintenance costs. The use of online and mobile banking is expected to increase steadily between 2021 and 2024, with the Asian market being the largest. With such a scale of consumer data present in the online sphere, cyber threats are growing as well and it is high time that conversations on cybersecurity should take precedence in the banking space. Some recurrent threats are:
Hacking is a cybercrime that involves a person gaining illegal access to a system or attempting to circumvent security mechanisms by hacking into customers’ accounts or banking sites.
Also Read: How to protect yourself against online financial frauds?
It is referred to as ”keystroke logging or keyboard capturing”. It is the process of secretly recording (logging) the keys pressed on a keyboard so that the person using it is oblivious that their activities are being tracked and these are incredibly harmful, stealing confidential information such as banking details, etc.
Phishing is a kind of swindle in which private information such as debit/credit card number customer ID, IPIN, CVV number, card expiry date, and so on is stolen via emails that seem to be from a genuine source.
One of the most dangerous cyber threats to electronic banking services is malware-based attacks. A malicious code is created in such attacks. The number of malware attacks in the banking industry is on the rise these days.
The evolution of cyber threats happened in India majorly in 1998 post privatization of the banking industry with virus attacks, followed by hacking websites, sending malicious codes, advanced worms, and Trojans, identity theft (Phishing), Denial of Service (DOS) and Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) in subsequent years and nowadays with cyber espionage and cyber warfare.
A new form of protection that has sprouted recently is called ‘Cyber-insurance’ which is a specialty insurance product intended to protect businesses from Internet-based risks, and more generally from risks relating to information technology infrastructure and activities. Cyber insurance makes sure that an organisation is economically secure in the event of a cyberattack, making it an essential element of a cyber security plan. Furthermore, cyber insurance will also help to pay to fix damaged systems and rebuild the data.
The financial system’s backbone has been information technology. Using trained cybersecurity experts takes it a step further in obtaining faster and more accurate cybercrime investigation results. Estimating proper checks on all problems, and involving all the stakeholders to solve these major problems relating to the technological growth in developing countries like India, these kinds of risks as mentioned in the research work can be minimised.
(The author is the CEO & Founder of Indian Cyber Security Solutions. Views are personal.)
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Preventing digital fraud: Why conversations on cybersecurity should take precedence in the banking space – The Financial Express
