Senior technological professionals are being hired by PSBs to improve cyber security

 Senior technological professionals are being hired by PSBs to improve cyber security

Banks now need to implement strict cyber security measures due to the rise in digital transactions. Senior technical specialists are being appointed by banks like as SBI, Bank of Maharashtra, and IOB to establish protocols that would prevent a recurrence of the UCO Bank incident.

Speaking about the rise in cybercrimes in banks, Duggal said that these institutions must realize that cybersecurity is more than just a box to be checked or a window dressing service.

Following recent issues with several PSBs' digital banking services, public sector banks (PSBs) are seeking to acquire technology and cyber security specialists, according to three prominent bankers who spoke with Moneycontrol.

Top executives of the three PSBs said that they are seeking to engage digital and cyber security specialists in order to better fortify their core and front-end systems in the wake of the recent problems with UCO Bank and Bank of Baroda. On November 10, UCO Bank reported an issue with its IMPS servers, and fraudulent activities were detected in Bob World, a digital application developed by Bank of Baroda.

A senior banker at Bank of Maharashtra said, "We are hiring a chief digital officer (CDO) and we have posted an advertisement for it," on the condition of anonymity.

In a similar vein, computer and digital specialists are in high demand at State Bank of India (SBI), the nation's biggest bank.

We see a deficiency in the market for recruiting executives with experience in technology and digital. However, we are always seeking to bring on new talent," SBI Chief Technology Officer (CTO) Balaji Rajagopalan said.

Indian Overseas Bank (IOB) said in a Moneycontrol interview on November 1 that it intends to recruit cyber security specialists. "We plan to bring on more cyber security professionals. We will shortly begin running the commercials, as stated by Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer (MD and CEO) AK Srivastava. We have received all internal permissions.

Technical issues with PSB

Due to a technical issue that occurred at UCO Bank on November 10, transactions started by customers of other banks were credited to UCO Bank account holders without any money actually coming from these institutions. UCO Bank explained that it has removed the IMPS money transfer function from its online platform in an exchange statement on November 15.

UCO Bank released a statement saying, "We would like to clarify that there is no issue with the IMPS platform."

Prior to July 2023, Bank of Baroda's digital mobile application, BoB) World, was connected to many people's contact data in order to manipulate client accounts and boost the number of mobile application registrations.

The state lender Bank of Baroda was then requested by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to cease accepting new clients via BoB World. RBI additionally said that consumers' continued use of the app is contingent upon the bank fortifying associated procedures and rectifying any shortcomings to RBI's satisfaction.

The BoB clarified that it has already taken remedial action to address the issues raised by the RBI and is taking further efforts to close any gaps that exist after following the RBI's directive. Furthermore, on October 18, Moneycontrol revealed in an exclusive story that the BoB had suspended over 60 workers, eleven of them were assistant general managers.

Furthermore, the RBI annual report for the fiscal year 2022–2023 disclosed that there were 14,264 fraud instances in the banking industry, up from 8,407 incidents in the previous year.

While PSBs registered 3,405 events last year compared to 3,075 previous year, private lenders recorded 8,932 instances compared to 5,332 in FY2012.

According to some media reports, the Finance Ministry will meet with the Parliamentary panel on Information and Communications Technology (ICT), in addition to the RBI, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Department of Telecommunications, and others, in light of the growing number of banking frauds. Among others is National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI).

What are the opinions of experts?

Srivastava of IOB said that the bank keeps an eye on its cyber security and technological aspects at the branch level. "There should be no short cuts in monitoring, and our bank's central office has a very capable and productive team keeping an eye on our cyber security and IT departments."

Experts said that banks should appoint skilled executives and invest more on their core technologies.

"Given the volume of digital transactions, this needs to be further strengthened even though banks have made significant investments." Furthermore, more specialist executives need to be appointed to banks' technical and digital teams, according to Sonali Kulkarni, head of Accenture's financial services division in India.