‘India’s financial system less vulnerable to cyber attacks’

The US or EU see eight times more attacks than India, says Saket Modi

Indian financial system is less vulnerable to cyber attacks compared to the United States or European Union countries, Saket Modi, CEO of Cyber Security Platform Lucideus, said here at a meeting on Saturday.

“The US or EU see eight times more attacks than India, which had enabled two-factor authentication for facilitating financial transaction. The governments in those countries were yet to mandate the two-factor authentication and that could be a reason for high fraudulent transaction,” he told reporters on the sidelines of a conference on ‘Secured Digital India’, organised by the company and Bannari Amman Institute of Technology, Sathyamangalam.

Though the number of fraudulent transaction was rising, it was still less compared to the US and EU countries and that was also because India had a fairly good, secure financial ecosystem, he added.

Likewise, the use of electronic voting machines could not be dispensed with because of allegations of hacking because the alternative was not going back to ballot papers but improving the security architecture of the machines, if necessary.

Improve security

Citing the number of successful cyber attacks on JP Morgan Chase, Mr. Modi reiterated that the only alternative was to keep on improving cyber security.

And, in doing so, the Central Government-constituted Justice (retd) B.N. Srikrishna Committee of Experts on Data Protection was a step in the right direction.

The Personal Data Protection Bill, 2018 was a well-thought piece, had many good things like it had defined what private data was and even had penalty for breach of customers’ data.

If Parliament were to pass the Bill, companies could be more worried about losing customers’ data than money.

In response to a question on cyber security in Smart Cities, Mr. Modi replied that cyber security feature was getting built into software by system integrators who had taken up projects in cities selected under the Smart Cities Mission and Bhopal was an example.

Police Commissioner Sumit Sharan said there was an urgent need to prioritise cyber security, what with the number of internet users going up due to governments giving a push to digital inclusion. He also said that India faced the third highest number of cyber attacks in the world.

Deputy Inspector of Police G. Karthikeyan said governments’ and private sector spend on cyber security had increased manifold as the number of cyber attacks increased in the country.

Bannari Amman Institute of Technology Chairman S.V. Balasubramaniam said that though technological advancements had enhanced the quality of life, they had come with the danger of cyber attacks. This required adequate safeguard, as had been highlighted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his recent talk in Singapore.

Lucideus vice president Rahul Tyagi demonstrated by hacking how mobile phones, CCTV cameras at airports and other smart devices were vulnerable to hacking.

Bannari Amman Institute of Technology Trust’s trustee M.P. Vijayakumar said the institution had partnered with Lucideus to offer courses, training and awareness programmes on cyber security.