‘Financial firms 300% more prone to hacking than businesses in other industries worldwide’

by Sanath Nanayakkare-July 26, 2016, 7:12 pm

Hackers target financial service firms 300 percent more than businesses in other industries, Praveen Sasidharan-Director Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu said in Colombo on Monday.

Sasidharan said this during his presentation at a workshop on Cybersecurity at the Taj Samudra Hotel in Colombo.

SJMS Associates, an independent correspondent firm of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Limited, a UK private company limited by guarantee, hosted this Cyber risk event in Colombo with participation from key banks and financial institutions in Sri Lanka. The event was aimed at raising awareness on rising cyber threats in the financial services sector and sharing best practices for cyber risk preparedness.

Sasidharan pointed out that companies in the financial services sector should evolve into a progressive cyber risk management paradigm that strives to achieve three fundamental qualities.

"The three key qualities are; being secure against known threats through risk-driven investment in foundational, preventive controls, and policies, being vigilant by improving the ability to detect emerging threats and anomalous patterns amid the highly complex and data-saturated environment; and being resilient to enable the organization to recover from attacks as quickly as possible and minimize both direct and indirect damages, he explained.

A. K. Viswanathan, Partner, Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu India LLP elaborated on the need for cyber security in the context of the financial services sector in Sri Lanka. "Technology trends and a shift to digital business, accompanied with the revolution in smart systems have caused a massive re-positioning of the financial services market from a fundamentally labour-based model to an automated process-driven business model. Financial institutions are also under increasing scrutiny from their regulators who are changing their approach to cyber security by transforming it from an IT discussion to a risk, business and board level discussion, he said.

"Further, cyberattacks on this sector and its customers are on the rise; birthed primarily by internet and mobile enabled banking services. Sri Lanka's steadily increasing mobile penetration and low barriers to internet usage increase vulnerabilities for banks and its customers, he said.

Basheer Ismail, Managing Partner, SJMS Associates, added; "Through our 40 years in providing professional services in the Sri Lankan market, we have served a vast range of companies on their assurance and advisory requirements. Our successful track record combined with Deloitte's high quality service capability and expertise in the risk advisory space presents a winning combination to set new benchmarks of cyber preparedness amongst companies in Sri Lanka."