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In a major initiative against cyber crime, the Kerala Police are planning to create a WhatsApp messenger group of nodal officers of banks, payment gateways, mobile wallets, e-commerce sites and members of the cyber cell of all police districts in the State.
Financial crime requires prompt response and hence the move to create a “WhatsApp-group based fraud protection system” involving all stakeholders, said a letter from Manoj Abraham, Inspector General of Police, to the nodal officers. It emphasised the need for immediate action to protect people from sophisticated social media-engineered attacks involving card-based (credit, debit/ATM), point-of-sale (PoS) and card-not-present (CNP) transactions.
Elaborating on the contours of the WhatsApp group, Abraham, who is also the nodal officer of the Kerala Police Cyberdome, said: “On receipt of a complaint regarding a digital financial fraud, a message will be immediately sent from the cyber cell to the nodal officer with details and a request to freeze the transaction.
“This action will ensure that the money is not siphoned away. Legal formalities will be followed as usual and communicated to the nodal officers in due course.”
An RBI working group on information security, electronic banking, technology-risk management and cyber frauds has observed that with advances in information technology and most banks migrating to core banking platforms, transactions happen via cards (debit and credit cards) or through electronic channels such as ATMs, internet and mobile banking. Fraudsters have also followed customers into this space.
In a report, ‘Invading privacy: Cyber crimes on the rise,’ PwC said that with the emergence of online and mobile banking, the financial services sector has become increasingly vulnerable to cyber crimes, particularly phishing and skimming.
Phishing and skimming attacks involve identity thefts by stealing confidential and personal information of customers. This not only damages reputation,but also leads to heavy financial losses that have to be ultimately borne by a bank or a financial institution.
The report said that as the IT infrastructure of organisations becomes more sophisticated, internal stakeholders are using advanced tools to commit cyber crimes from within the organisation. Cyber attacks occur more from internal sources than from external ones.
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