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FITC links cybercrime uptick to digitisation of banking services

By Waliat Musa
01 November 2022   |   2:45 am
Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC) has linked the rising spate of digital risks to digitisation of banking services. It, therefore, advised banks to adopt the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) cybersecurity framework

[files] Cybercrime. PHOTO: Reuters

Financial Institutions Training Centre (FITC) has linked the rising spate of digital risks to digitisation of banking services. It, therefore, advised banks to adopt the Central Bank of Nigeria’s (CBN) cybersecurity framework to tackle the menace.

FITC Managing Director/CEO, Chizor Malize, disclosed this during the third edition of ThinkNnovation Cybersecurity Conference held in Lagos yesterday, themed: ‘Accelerating the Adoption of Cybersecurity: Reimagine, Simplify, Grow.’

She said that to stem the negative trend, CBN revised the risk-based framework and policy guidelines issued to banks and other financial institutions, and mandated them to comply with its provisions by January 1, 2023.

Malize said the digital risk is one of the topmost risks in the world today and is being fueled by the rise in digitisation of banking services.

Over the past few years, there has been an increase in cyber threats due to the post-pandemic global acceleration of digitisation across the financial services sector. This unprecedented increase has resulted in significant financial losses to both corporate entities and individuals globally.

She said: “Digitisation offers a large playing field for the growth of cybercrime. The risks continue to grow high, the threats continue to grow, the attacks become ceaseless, and every single one of us is prone, and while organisations drive the goals to digitise and automate operations, cyber risks proliferate. Every aspect of the digital enterprise has important cybersecurity implications,”

Malize disclosed that the FITC ThinkNnovation Cybersecurity conference was designed to tackle the rise in cybercrime by equipping Chief Information Officers (CIOs), Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs), and their teams to establish cybersecurity as an enterprise-wide service.

In a report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, it was stated: “Financial institutions are leading targets of cyber attacks. Banks are where the money is, and for cybercriminals, attacking banks offers multiple avenues for profit through extortion, theft, and fraud, while nation-states and hacktivists also target the financial sector for political and ideological leverage.

“Regulators are taking notice, and implementing new controls for cyber risk, to address the growing threat to the banks they supervise. The Strategic Technologies Programme studies the evolution of cyber threats to the financial system and legal and regulatory efforts to strengthen its defenses.”

Chairman of the FITC Board and CBN Deputy Governor (Financial System Stability), Mrs. Aishah Ahmad, in her address, stated that there has been a lot of focus on financial institutions because of their interconnectedness.

She said: “We have also seen cyber attacks on other critical infrastructure, like pipelines in the U.S., hospitals in Germany, and so on around 2020, and we are not immune from these attacks in our country as well.

“The major countries in Africa that experienced cyber attacks are large countries, like South Africa, Nigeria, and the like, but we saw an explosion of these attacks during and after the COVID-19 pandemic. However, these attacks have been largely unsuccessful, and we will continue to learn from these incidents.”

Highlighting the vulnerability that comes with cyber attacks, even on individuals, the keynote speaker, CEO/Founder of Resolut Consulting, Canada, Daniel Monehin said: “When you are attacked, data that you don’t even need or have ever accessed – these hackers gain access to it, and if they have useful information that can be compromised, that’s it!”

He said people easily recognise threats to physical security but underestimate the risks of cybersecurity, and that’s why people put things in place to ensure physical security, like high walls, gates, CCTV, access codes, and so on. But there aren’t multiple measures like this taken against imminent cyber-attacks.

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