NEW DELHI: In the wake of the PNB fraud, the government is planning to conduct cyber audit of all public-sector banks to check their vulnerability and preparedness towards cyber fraud. “The ministry is taking many steps to strengthen banks and minimise risk from both internal and external and agencies. Soon, there will be a cyber audit of the banks to assess their vulnerability towards cyber attacks,” said a senior official from the Department of Financial Services.
The decision came after the recent cyber attack on the Indian bank and the fraud-hit Punjab National Bank.
On Thursday, The Asia Times had reported a new data breach in PNB, which has allegedly compromised sensitive data of some 10,000 credit and debit card holders, including their names, expiry dates, personal identification and CVV numbers.
Earlier, Chennai-based City Union Bank had reported that “cyber criminals” had hacked its systems and transferred nearly $2 million through three unauthorised remittances to lenders overseas via the SWIFT platform.
While RBI has already instructed the bank to integrate SWIFT with the Core Banking Solution (CBS), the government feels this is high time it did a complete analysis of the cyber security measures in the wake of increasing number of cases of cyber frauds.
“This is high time to admit that many PSBs are afflicted by inferior technology, weak risk management towards cyber attack and a lack of trained staff to deal with sophisticated nature of cyber crime,” said the official cited above.The roadmap for the audit will be discussed with banks in the next meeting between the finance ministry and the bankers.
Initially, there was a plant to set up a Fin-CERT, Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) dedicated only to financial sector breaches. RBI was supposed to run the pilot but it did not happen.
“The PNB fraud has highlighted the need for banks to review their internal controls and security. Rogue elements should not jeopardise the security and integrity of banks - be it with or without collusion from outsiders”, said Usha Ananthasubramian, chairman of IBA, addressing a banking technology conference on Friday.