The Hindu Business Line : `It's a borderless world for cyber crime'

"The agencies do not have the convergence among themselves but criminals have," Capt Raghu Raman, Chief Executive Officer, Mahindra Special Services Group, told Business Line.

Mahindra Special Services Group, an information security company, is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mahindra & Mahindra Group. Excerpts:

What is your outlook on cyber crime globally? How are banks responding to this new threat?

Credit card frauds, pharming, phishing and hacking attacks in cyber space have grown by 500 per cent in the last one year, but it has still not reached alarming proportions. Internationally, banks are more concerned about losing money on transactions. They lose big bucks when they have to pay interest on those transactions, which ideally should have been interest-free. The delays in the transactions cost them much more than cyber crimes.

Cyber crime has not reached industry-threatening proportions. Internal fraud is much bigger than cyber crime. However, the alarming situation is there is growing convergence of crime.

Are cyber criminals and traditional criminals coming together?

Five types of crimes are now converging. Cyber crimes such as identity theft, illegal access to e-mail, and credit card fraud are coming together with money laundering and terrorist activities. Large amounts of money is now stored in digital form. Now you can transfer money through electronic and online gateways to multiple accounts.

Digital crime is used to launder money, which could have come from the sale of contraband goods like narcotics, conflict diamonds or weapons. This money could be used further for terrorist activities.

How secure are Indian banks?

When a counterfeit currency note turns up at a bank, in many instances bank do not file an FIR, it simply destroys the note and absorbs the loss. The process of notifying a fake note to the police is cumbersome and banks want to avoid such situations. In cases of cyber crimes also banks take similar action.

How effective is our law enforcement system?

Separate wings of the law enforcement agencies are dealing with digital crimes, money laundering, economic offences and terrorist crimes. The agencies do not have the convergence among themselves but the criminals have. Criminals are working in a borderless world but the police in one State is still grappling with procedures on how to arrest a person residing in another State.