Why cyber security is crucial to strengthen your banking services
The effect of COVID-19 on Indian Banking Services
Resilience has been seen in the economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on India’s banking sector. However, some of the concerns experienced during the pandemic were credit risk, online fraudulent transactions, crisis management, and cyber threats. Lack of access to systems and data was a major technological challenge as well.
Prioritization of certain frameworks considering the COVID-19 pandemic to resolve immediate concerns and certain policies to get back economic productivity was required. Multi-dimensional initiatives were the order of the day given corporate frameworks and commercial endeavors.
Indian Cyber Security solutions in the banking industry
Cyber security solutions imply the use of technologies and practices with the purpose of network protection, device protection from virtual attacks for the prevention of defects due to unauthorized access. Ensuring you have a good cyber security solution in place ensures a strong foundation for highly reliable banking services.
Cyber security is essential for the protection of commercial assets and personal data from malicious attacks. As you can imagine, the confidentiality of clients’ banking data and customers’ credentials are of utmost significance. Online transactions using debit cards and credit cards must be enhanced with cybersecurity.
Why your digital banking solution needs cyber security?
According to the National Crime Records Bureau, overall, online transactional fraud cases reported were 2,093 in 2019. In the year 2020, considering the COVID-19 pandemic, cases reported were more than 4000. 85% of online fraud transaction cases were analyzed in 5 Indian states. Having a robust cybersecurity framework in place will ensure the safety of banking data without any scope for unauthorized access, preventing any monetary loss for the bank and its customers. Disclosure of crucial and confidential customer banking details could lead to online fraudulent transactions with losses.
With a cyber security solution, you can prevent any loss from incidents such as unencrypted data, fraudulent transactions, malware, spoofing, third-party services, and phishing.
What to consider when planning your cyber security strategy
- Appropriate governance methods, ethical policies, and code-of-conduct to be ensured
- A cyber security solutions committee should be officially formed for the implementation of monthly audits considering the bank’s technical and commercial operations
- Officially decide cyber security frameworks with parameters for prevention of future data breaches, online frauds, phishing, and any other unethical banking practices
- Analyzing the intensity of exposure to cyber security and banking risks with methods such as Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing
- Ensure adherence and compliance to cyber security banking norms as one of the important Cyber security strategies
Root Cause Analysis of Cyber Security Threats in Digital Banking
The Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) sector include valuable roles of tax management services, internal audit services, business process management services, financial advisory services, fraud risk management services, and compliance services. Because these services deal with money and often people’s entire savings, identifying the root cause of online cyber security threats is essential.
Identity and access management should also be supervised. You can regulate and supervise banking duties by the provision of access granted only to required systems for each employee depending on their job role. Lack of awareness, an increase of ransomware, and no importance given to cyber security are other reasons.
Benefits of cyber security to digital banking services
- General Data Protection Regulation – Regulation to be implemented for the protection of commercial banking data to avoid any mishaps is significant.
- Service optimization – Execution of daily cyber security practices, offers the scope for transforming banking services to be effective, and perfect.
- Integrated Security – Since the BFSI sector is highly-regulated, banks prefer investment in integrated technological solutions for all work aspects to be done in an integrated way in one place. This provides time and cost-efficiency benefits.
- Machine Learning and Big Data Analytics –Analytics that includes keeping a check on the results and benefits of cyber security management policies for banking operations are significant. Cyber resilience must be promoted with the scope of analyzing security data and a real-time advantage.
The future of cyber security for the Indian Banking Industry
The Indian BFSI sector will continue to emerge considering adherence to cyber security management frameworks and implementation of certain strategies to prevent cyber frauds. Considering the pandemic and rise of online transactions, the scope for fraud might be possible. Analysis of past cyber threat banking incidents with their root cause identification is beneficial. In this context, being data vigilant from cybercriminals is the need of the hour.
Cloud-based cyber security services offer efficient workload management that will be safer for enterprises with benefits of operational efficiency, scalability, and agility. Preference for hybrid cloud strategies and cloud-based Cyber Security solutions will be seen. The use of automated products, automated services, and automated software with enhanced endpoint security will be reported.
According to the Indian Cyber Security Services Landscape Report, the size of Indian Cyber security services is estimated growth at financials of $4.3 billion in 2019 to $7.6 billion in 2022. This indicates the emergence of cyber security strategies for the prevention of cyber security threats. Data Infrastructure which is the foundation and crucial to banking must be under higher scrutiny considering cyber security threats in the future.