HYDERABAD: In the aftermath of what can be termed as a paradigm shift in the world of bank frauds, the Cyberabad police found many loopholes in the banking systems today. A multi-layered verification process by a bank has been termed as a must when verifying a customer’s identity before validating their query or transaction. Police further suggest that in addition to regular internal audits, having a cyber forensic audit of the bank procedures at frequent intervals is advisable.
“As the banks continue to make their systems more and more foolproof, scamsters are also catching up with smarter ways to break into them. The best way to prevent such attacks is to regularly update all systems used by the banks, secure them with several levels of tests, to upgrade them accordingly,” says Cyberabad Police Commissioner, VC Sajjanar.
After last week’s detection, Cyberabad police have written to all banks operating in the city, alerting them of the newly-discovered mechanism of fraud while suggesting measures to stay safe. “We plan to create a platform for the exchange of information between banks, police and other stakeholders when avoiding frauds,” Sajjanar added.
“I believe most of them have taken a serious note of the suggestions and have already started working to improve their systems accordingly,” he opined.
The suggestions to banks include allowing their customers to contact the customer care service only through a registered mobile number, for every query. Multi-faceted authentications for a customer accessing the customer care centre for their bank account details should be put into place. Banks should also allow the customers to download the respective bank’s mobile applications on the mobile handsets, which use only the registered mobile number.
Bankers were also advised to restrict access to the bank’s mobile applications as well, limiting it to only those with the registered mobile numbers.
As the ICICI bank fraud involved fraudsters making hundreds of calls to their customer care from a few numbers, banks are advised to identify repeated calls from fraudsters and block unregistered mobile numbers.