Hackers Are Leveraging Radical Attack Vectors

According to Gnana Prakash Masilamani, Post-Sales Leader, Cyberbit, banks should have a very good Last line of Defence with EDR solutions to protect their endpoints as these endpoints are the weakest link in the network and very easy to compromise

- Sunil Rajguru

What are some of the top cyber threats Indian banks face? How are they different from other foreign banks? What are some of the high-profile attacks both in India and abroad?

The increasing number and complexity of cyber attacks today highlights the need for financial institutions to strengthen their information security and cyber resilience. The repercussions of a cyber attack are often far-reaching in the banking sector due to several factors such as customer data privacy, loss of reputation, business continuity, and regulatory actions alongside others. The biggest challenge, perhaps, is that attackers are simultaneously becoming more sophisticated. They are leveraging radical attack vectors and ultramodern technologies to penetrate deeper into a bank’s network.

It is also important to note that the major difference on the cyber security front vis-à-vis Indian and a foreign bank is the volume of transactions. Indian Banks are relatively big not just in terms of the turnover but also in terms of the number of customers they deal with. On an average, any smallsize bank in India will have more than 1000 branch offices and the largest bank’s count might cross 24,000. All devices in the individual branch offices will connect back to the back-end systems. So, if there is any unresolved vulnerability, it increases the cyber risk of Indian banks by multiple folds.

How ready are Indian banks to counter financial cyber attacks?