The Indian team of Kaspersky Lab recently held a discussion on new trends in BFSI and how to get equipped to counter advanced cyber threats with Aleks Gostev, Chief Security Expert, Global Research and Analysis Team. The power breakfast event saw a participation of over seven CISO’s and IT heads of major banks.
Aleks elaborated on new technologies, new cyber threats and analysing the state of IT Security in the financial sector amongst other important topics. The famous bank breaches detected by the global research and analysis team got a dedicated two- way dialogue slot too. The cyber and financial threats that are predicted for the year 2017 especially in India post - demonetisation were thrown light upon in Alexander’s presentation. According to Aleks, there are two different problems that the banks and financial institutes are facing – attack on customers and attack on banks. Mobile banking has also become a threat to the customers. Aleks also informed the CISO’s about how recently the G20 countries in Europe have agreed to work together on cybersecurity.
On the occasion of a discussion on cyber threat, Altaf Halde, MD-South Asia, Kaspersky Lab said “We started this financial year with the post- demonetisation scenario and a surge in digitisation in India. Earlier our detection rate was nearly 3,25,000 threats on a daily basis. The threat figures have certainly gone up.” Kaspersky also witnessed the mobile security gaining importance among the users. It was pointed that t people have now started thinking about the weakest link in the computing environment, which is smartphones.
“Our findings on mobile virus started in 2004, currently there are 5000 mobile viruses every day globally. That is the rate at which cyber threats to mobile is on an increase,” Aleks said. The Indian consumers using the banking apps on their mobile phones are specific targets of the cyber criminal groups internationally. He said that the breaches in Indian banking system need to be fixed as fast as possible. It was stressed that banking officials should not put important information like their post or job descriptions on social media platforms.
Oleg Abdurashitov, Head of Public Affairs, APAC focused on FINCERT which is currently only in Russia and India. “We hope that other countries also come together in order to fight the cyber criminal groups that work together globally. CISO’s are mandatory for every bank here on but they are not the only people responsible for cybersecurity, the problem is the lower level which can be targeted by the cybercriminals. We from our end reach out to the Government of India and the banking bodies and voluntarily provide information to them on any breaches or threats that are detected by our research team,” said Oleg.
