Be careful while you do your NEFT and UPI, warns RBI of cyber attacks; These banks are most vulnerable

According to a warning by RBI, several banks are put on high alert in this nation. Banks have been given an alert for continuously monitoring all those systems associated with SWIFT, card networks, RTGS, NEFT, and UPI. This has been informed in the Economic Times report.

The advisory by the Reserve Bank of India to financial institutions states, "Given credible intelligence received regarding possible cyber attacks, regulated entities are advised to upgrade monitoring and resilience capabilities to protect against these threats." In its advisory, banks have been asked to increase the surveillance capacity to identify threats and speed up the rescue measures. The Reserve Bank issued this alert when a recent social media post warned that Indian bank account holders were threatened. The advisory was issued on June 24, and on the same day, a social media post claimed a hacker group called LulzSec would target Indian banks. LulzSec earlier has been behind several high-profile cyber attacks.

According to a report in the RBI's Financial Stability Report, there have been reports of over 20,000 cyber attacks in the financial sector over the last two decades, causing losses of $20 billion.

According to a report by the Data Security Council of India, as of December 2023, clicking on malicious links in emails and websites triggered 25% of the attacks against India. Regarding the RBI data, 69 percent of the cyber attacks on financial institutions were reported by scheduled commercial banks, while 19 percent were by urban cooperative banks and 12 percent by non-banking finance companies. That is why insurance coverage of banks would increase by about 8 percent in 2023-24 over the last year, Business Standard reported, citing cover brokers. Banks' claims for cyber insurance increased by more than 50 percent during FY2022-23, compared to 40 percent last year, Business Standard quoted insurance brokers as saying.