Hacker threat looms above finance-banking sector
The recent hacking accident at national flag carrier Vietnam Airlines rang the alarm for the local banking system, as many of its members have been keeping expenditure to modernize their Core Banking system to a minimum.
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Therefore, right after the largest cyberspace attack in the history of country, the central bank (SBV) issued a warning to local commercial banks and intermediary settlement institutions of the growing threat of hackers compromising local businesses’ information technology systems.
The leader of a Hanoi-based major commercial joint stock bank told VIR, “IT-related crimes in the banking sector have become increasingly frequent and sophisticated. The Vietnam Airlines’ incident could be repeated at any company, including banking entities. It is long overdue to ramp up IT investments.”
Though the local banking system has yet to incur serious damage from hacker attacks, reports of hi-tech crimes have been coming in frequently.
During the past decade, the financial-monetary security forces have uncovered several dozen schemes, causing losses surpassing VND1 trillion (US$46 million).
Right in the second quarter of 2016, TPBank almost lost US$1.13 million in a cyber attack. Earlier, hackers stole approximately US$1 billion from the Central Bank of Bangladesh’s account at the New York branch of the US Federal Reserve.
A recent report released by leading cybersecurity firm Kaspersky Lab showed that Vietnam ranks third in the world when it comes to latent web surfing threats, with about 35% of Internet users having been hacked.
As banking field crimes have grown sharply in number and profess increasing complexity, technology investment, particularly into banks’ brain or Core Banking system, has proven imperative.
According to banking experts, a cutting-edge Core Banking system can cost tens of million of US dollars. However, Vietnamese banks’ spending on security systems varies greatly.
Such investment may touch a hundred million dollars at leading banks, like VietinBank or Vietcombank, but only stay at several million dollars at minuscule institutions, leaving them highly vulnerable to hacker attacks.
According to technology, media, and research firm IDG ASEAN’s recent assessment, the finance and banking sector will top IT spending in the upcoming time.
Particularly, from now to 2020, this sector would spend US$77 billion on IT, security, and privacy, equal to more than half of global total spending on this field.
