How To Prevent Banking Infrastructure From Cyber Attacks?

The panel discussion on ‘Cyber Security in Banking’ held at BW Businessworld’s BFSI CXO Summit in Mumbai discussed the security measures to be taken for a secured banking transaction environment. Making the opening remark, Bharat Panchal, Chief Information Security Officer, National Payments Corporation of India said that cyber security has become a buzz-word in today’s world and we have many challenges to manage to create a safe environment.

Elaborating further, Shiv Kumar Pandey, Chief Information Security Officer, Bombay Stock Exchange said, “Nowadays cyber attacks are more targeted – Industry to industry, organisation to organisation etc.”

Responding to a question as to how we can overcome or at least reduce these threats, Shrikant Shitole, Managing Director, Symantec India observed, “Threats are occurring from time and again and the most effective measure is to have our own back-up.”

Ritesh Doshi, Regional Head, Cisco India opined, “What probably lacking in cyber security is the communication between the solution provider and the user at the right time. There should be an integrated and coordinated approach to overcome these.”

Are we completely or adequately secured today? Answering this, Shitole said, No and added that we can do better by way of employing the technology in the right manner. “We will have to be up to date about what is happening around the world and also need to be aware of what is happening in the social media. This will help us prevent any kind of cyber attacks in banking and financial services sector to a certain extent,” Shitole said.

Prevention is one way to overcome the cyber attacks while detection is another way. Detection of attacks depends upon the programme we select, the software we use etc., he added.

Bhuvanesh Shukla, Chief Technology Officer, Axis Securities opined, “We need to identify the internal threats to prevent future attacks. It is important to find out the origin of the previous attacks/crimes/frauds to prevent a possible attack in future.”

Adding to this Pandey said, “We have to check our own organisation, people and the technology we use. We have to be prepared and check periodically these areas to find out if we are ready to overcome an attack.”

Explaining further, Doshi said that there should be the platform to communicate about the threats across the spectrum. Then only we have a real secure atmosphere, he added.

The panellists agreed that in a digitised world, cyber security has become a social responsibility. Moreover, they felt that investments for cyber security in banking and the financial segment is not adequate enough and need to do much more.