The biggest culprit leading to identity theft is ‘password sharing’. Phishing, malicious websites and social media are some of the ways in which identity theft is perceived to occur, according to KPMG India Partner Murali Talasila.
At a session on “Making sense of futuristic fraud”, organised by the Confederation of India (CII), here on Tuesday, Mr. Murali underlined the need for the industry to have a cyber incidence response policy to check cyber frauds. Quoting the key findings of a KPMG India Fraud Survey 2012, he said that it was surprising that the employees in some organisations share passwords and worse still was the practice of writing the password on the monitor.
A clear policy on information assets of the company and who should be able to access and to what extent, regular training by experts and setting up a specialist team to handle cyber security would go a long way in checking the incidence of cyber crimes.
The need to have whistleblower hotlines and protecting the identity of the caller was important.
Deputy Commissioner of Police P. Viswa Prasad said that 156 cyber crimes had been registered in Visakhapatnam city during 2012. He said that most of the cyber crimes registered related to offensive SMS, threat emails, uploading profiles of girls, ATM frauds and Nigerian frauds.
There were two Cyber Crime Police Stations in AP – one in Hyderabad and the other in Cyberabad Police Commissionerates and the need to set up a third Cyber Crime Police Station in Visakhapatnam was already taken to the notice of the State Government. At present a Cyber Crime Cell was there in the city.
Cyber Crime SI Satish said that cyber criminals send fake mails as a bait to steal data from their unsuspecting victims and extract money from them.
He said that the public should be extra careful when shopping with their debit or credit cards. One should not disclose their card numbers and PIN no. to anyone and once the hackers get them they would drain the victims accounts from a remote location.
Past Chairman of CII G.S. Shiv Kumar, General Manager (IT) of Eisai Pharma Technology and Manufacturing Private Limited Joseph Kiran Kumar and Financial Adviser of Sankhya Technologies Pvt. Ltd. B.V. Prasad participated in the panel discussion.
Earlier, CII Chairman and MD of Sravan Shipping Services Pvt. Ltd. G. Sambasiva Rao welcomed the gathering.
