increase in data leaks in the banking and financial sector

Data breaches and digital banking threats are the biggest challenges for the banking and financial sector, with more than 50 percent of the reported cases, involving the leak or sale of databases. Speaking exclusively to CNBC-TV18 Ripu Bajwa, Director, Data Protection Solutions, Dell Technologies said that phishing, ransomware and data leaks are going to be the biggest threats for businesses in the near term.

“Malware-based cyber incidents accounted for about 18 percent of the total attacks recorded against this sector in 2022”, Bajwa said.

According to Dell Technologies companies must focus on digital safety of UPI and paywalls over the next two years.

Also Read: HDB Financial confirms leak of customers’ personal information in a data breach

Amid an increase in cyber-attacks on financial institutions and regulatory authorities, the market watchdog, SEBI, has issued guidelines for registered entities. Among other things, the regulator has directed registered entities do cybersecurity audits and VPAT- Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing.

According to a report by CERT-In, India witnessed 13.91 lakh cybersecurity incidents in 2022. Deloitte India’s Banking survey 2022 said that about 40 percent of the frauds in India can be attributed to digital and cyber-related issues. Mobile, internet banking frauds, identity and data theft and phishing are currently the biggest concerns for the banks.

“Vulnerability Assessment and Penetration Testing (VAPT) is the testing process that detects the security flaws within an application software program or a network. VAPT methods are designed to support users to authenticate their enterprise-level security against the real-world threat, recognize the risks of the system and the network and know the consequences of these flaws. Every industry spends a fair amount of share in their security systems. Taking charge and confirming the reliability and robustness of the processes is highly important. VAPT services help improve networks and immune the security system and guard it against malicious actors,” Bajwa said.

Dell Technologies like other software and cyber security companies is working with companies in the financial sector and even the Karnataka government to help them in strengthening their cyber security setup. Among the threats, Trojans, Ransomware, Botnet, and Info Stealers have been the most popular attack vectors used by cybercriminals to target this industry.

“Inspired by the ease of implementation of the Business-as-a-Service (BaaS) model, cybercriminals have developed their variant known as Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS). Effectively, this means that cybercriminals no longer have to create their own malware, they can simply lease the malware”, Bajwa said.

According to reports, a cyber or ransomware attack occurs every 11 seconds in India. The Indian digital payment industry is expected to grow beyond $700 billion by the end of this year. However, experts believe that the lack of cybersecurity hygiene among a large number of digital payment users raises the risk of cybercrimes such as UPI frauds, debit or credit card cloning.