Why do banks need CYBERSECURITY?
As we know that the world is going digital in every aspect, and so is the banking industry and its operations. The widespread of digitalization in the banking space has reached such a huge level that that prevention of online databases has emerged as a topmost priority for banks. The answer to that is cybersecurity, it is a planned process through which cybersecurity experts can prevent hardware, software, and data from cyber attacks. In simple words, cyber security helps to stop any unauthorized request to databases or servers, whose ambition is to get crucial and secret information about the related banks or any organization for that matter.
1. Recent attack cases reported
• Recently the news came from the Netherlands that their top three banks have been targeted by attackers in an attempt to block of internet banking services and websites.
• Some other institutions who also got hit for the same cause were The Dutch Revenue Service and a national digital signature system, but at least, in this case, the damage was repaired quickly for both the organizations.
• One more organization got hit named ABN Amro which is the Eurozone nation’s third-largest lender. It faced attacks over the week and a total of 7 attacks over the last week.
• Rabobank, which is country’s third to none lender, also saw something faulty in its internet banking services as systems were not working properly. these cases surely give us a very strong and definite reason as to Why do banks need CYBERSECURITY.
2. Why are banks vulnerable towards cyber attacks
The major reason for this can be one fact that banks are the financial institutions who lend money to the whole world by obtaining it through their customer’s banks accounts. Banks are financial institutions which can be easily seen everywhere around the world, due to this widespread they gather a huge pool of currency and crucial information almost about everyone in this world.
So it builds up a huge pool of information which if stolen can be of huge financial interest to the hacker.
Also, as we know that, the world is going digital and digital bank transactions have taken over the world as a new mode of payments, it hence gives hacker more and more information of bank accounts in which they try to loot in.
We can some up some other reasons that why banks are vulnerable towards cyber attacks in 3 points
• Lack of equipment
As we are entering a new digital era, hence the tools and methods used by an attacker are very much sophisticated as compared to the previous times. To counter the same banks nowadays cannot rely upon the traditional and outdated method and pieces of equipment to prevent any kind of data leak.
• Unskilled manpower
Only getting updated machinery or tools with the latest technology will not work in isolation, as we need the manpower also. Not only any kind of manpower is sufficient, but the need of the hour is that the people should be hired who have particular skills so that they can understand and operate the machines with new technology and are able to protect a particular organization from cyber attacks.
• Lack of knowledge among the employees about the subject.
In the new era, most of the employees and customers don’t know about the new things like cybersecurity .this leads to building up of an environment where nor the employees neither the customers are interested in knowing that how that particular bank is going to protect their online presence and their data from cyber attackers. Awareness can lead to giving importance to things like these which will be in turn beneficial to both for the organization and as well as to the customers.
3. The intention of the attackers
• Financial gain
Generally, most of the cyber attacks which take place are for gaining some money or profit out of it. The attackers aim to gain crucial information about debit or credit cards or anything like that with which they can sort of steal currency from banks customers account.
• For publicity or social objective
The other main reason is that the people who want to show the world of their presence they do these cyber attacks for the sake of gaining recognition, obviously they don’t show their full identity but they do it with by making a website like Anonymous.
Another reason can be that if any customer of the bank has a grudge in past over any issue can also take this step, so as to basically damage the reputation of that bank and as well as lower down the goodwill.
One more scope is that sometimes competitors try to bring your business down by using these kinds of hackings and trying to compromise the security of our business, which happens in an unhealthy competition and can happen in any industry, also banking industry.
4. Impacts of such attacks (losses incurred by the organizations in the recent years)
As we know that if a cybercriminal is able to hack the database of any bank successfully then it is just a matter of minutes, and he can steal currency worth millions, using the crucial banking information as told above.
The loss in such cases easily goes up to several millions of dollars, as the banks have huge currency which is kept with them.
A few years back on 4th of February.2016, the banking industry of a developing nation named Bangladesh lost around $101 million from the country’s bank account at world’s reputed the New York Federal Reserve. It was also the biggest cybercrime attack till date for the country post attack many questions were raised on the cybersecurity of banks, but then it was of no use as the money was already been stolen all it did was that it gave a warning signal to other banks.
Also recently the second largest bank in Chile has also lost around $10 million in a recent cyber attack. It was later found out that the attackers planted a virus which affected thousands of its workstation’s, 9000 of computer systems and left the system in such a situation where they were not able to reboot.
The bank had also to forcefully stop all its’ operations at nearly 400 of its branches throughout the country, it took 14 days to recover the system from damage.
5. How can banking organizations prevent cyber attacks
The banks can prevent themselves from cyber attacks by following ways
• Well defined and strict IT policy
The cybersecurity comes under the IT department of any organization. The policy regarding the same issue should be so clearly defined that in case of emergency, negligible amount of time is taken.
• Constant monitoring.
After defining the clear-cut policy, a proper and constant eye should be kept upon that whether the guidelines are being followed or if any loophole is still left in cybersecurity aspect.
YOU CAN ALSO CHECK OUT THIS TED TALK ABOUT INFORMATION SECURITY /-
All in all, we can conclude that cybersecurity has emerged as a basic as necessary need for every financial institution.
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