To curb rising cyber incidents on monetary transactions, India’s central bank, Reserve Bank of India, recently announced an enhanced security mechanism as part of its agenda for the fiscal year 2018-19. The newly proposed mechanism is intended to provide high-level protection against cybersecurity threats.
“In an endeavor to strengthen the cybersecurity posture of Indian banks, focused and theme-based IT examinations are planned during 2018-19. Targeted scrutiny, as and when required, would also be conducted for appropriate policy and supervisory intervention,” the RBI said.
With digital transactions witnessing a significant rise, the Indian central bank stated that it’s reinforcing data protection, cybersecurity, and Know Your Customer (KYC) norms to make them more effective.
“With the emerging threat landscape, where organized cybercrime and cyber warfare are gaining prominence, the Department (of Information Technology) is working towards ensuring continuous protection against changing the contours of cybersecurity threat,” RBI stated in its annual report.
The RBI’s report said the new agenda includes taking effective steps to initiate the process of developing a cybersecurity culture, endeavor to make cybersecurity a responsibility, and ensure confidentiality, integrity, and availability of information system and resources. According to the report, the new private sector and foreign banks accounted for 36 percent each of all cyber frauds reported in debit, credit, and ATM cards.
“In order to secure consistency and improve the efficiency of the off-site monitoring mechanism, an Audit Management Application portal to facilitate various supervisory functions of the Cyber Security and Information Technology Examination (CSITE) Cell and to fully automate monitoring of returns has been envisaged, which will be operationalized by March 2019.” the report said.