The Banking Executive Magazine, Issue 154, October 2021

Cases of Cybersecurity Attacks in Digital banking According to a global economic crime survey, cybercrime has in- creased tremendously and is the most reported economic crime. With the world going digital, cybercrimi- nals have also found new ways to at- tack and breach data. Worldwide, banks are facing attacks from organ- ized criminals and hackers. An ex- ample is a recent case with Canara Bank where a hacker attacked and defaced the bank’s site by inserting a malicious page and tried blocking some of the bank’s e-payments. Factors that raise a serious challenge to cybersecurity in digital banking are: • Lack of awareness: Cybersecurity awareness among people has been quite low, and not many firms invest in training and improving the overall cybersecu- rity awareness. • Inadequate budgets and lack of management: Cybersecurity is accorded low pri- ority and most of the time neg- lected in the budgets. Top management focus remains low on cybersecurity, and support for cy- bersecurity projects is given low priority. This may be because top management underestimate the impact of cybersecurity threats. • Weak identity and access management: Identity and access management has been the fundamental element of cybersecurity. It may require only one hacked credential to enter into an enterprise network. • Rise of Ransomware: The recent events of malware attacks bring our focus to rising menace of ransomware. Cyber- criminals are starting to use meth- ods that avoid them to be detected by endpoint protection code that focuses on executable files. • Mobile devices and Apps: Most of the banking institutions have adopted mobile phones as a medium to conduct business. As the base increases each day, it also becomes the ideal choice for ex- ploiters. Mobile phones have be- come an attractive target for hackers as we see a rise in mobile phone transactions. • Social Media: Adoption of social media has led hackers to exploit even more. Less aware customers put out their data for anyone to see which is ex- ploited by the attackers. Windows 11 the BANKING EXECUTIVE 32 ISSUE 154 OCTOBER 2021 Figure 1: Cybersecurity Threats in Digital Banking (Source: Enterslice consultancy)