The Nigeria Interbank Settlement System (NIBSS) has asked banks and other financial institutions to protect customers’ accounts by extending operational controls to homes where majority of their staff work from due to COVID-19 pandemic.
NIBSS Chief Information Officer, Wunmi Faiga, said extending such controls like multi-factor authentication or multi-layered security structure and ensuring that their secret login details are not exposed to their family members will help protect their institutions and customers.
Speaking at the Financial Institutions Training Centre/Nigeria Interbank Settlement System Virtual Think_Nnovation Conference at the weekend in Lagos, she said that bank customers and staff should be risk aware. “The risk segment of the organisations should pay attention to the insider threats because some of the crimes are aided, abated by internal stakeholders. I also advise that controls should be extended to home as people have started working from home.,” she said.
Faiga, also said that finial institutions should also be cautious about third party risk, as cashless world, and demand for quick realtime services are leading to e-fraud. “Third party risk assessment is very critical and getting the third parties connected in your business to embrace the right governance will help,” she said. On who should bear the loss from cyber fraud, Chief Information Security Officer at FirstBank, Harrison Nnaji, said: “Now, when a customer has not done anything to fertilize a fraudulent transaction on his or her account, such customer should not bear the loss. And there are customer protection opportunities they can leverage on.
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But when the bank has demonstrated that it has taken adequate steps to protect its service, and the customer, but because of what we may call family fraud, or friendly fraud- when someone you expect to protect you leverages on the information you provided to defraud you the fraud occurred, then the bank may not be liable. For a customer to recover lost money through e-fraud, he/ she will have to prove to the bank that the transaction would not have happened, without you knowingly or unknowingly facilitating it.”
Also, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) Deputy Governor Financial System Stability, Mrs. Aishah Ahmad, said the use of online scams, phishing mail, disruptive malware, data harvesting malware and malicious domains laced with COVID-19 related themes to defraud bank customers is on the rise.
She said INTERPOL’s August 2020 report on the cybercrime COVID-19 impact finds that cyber criminals are developing and boosting their attacks at an alarming rate, exploiting the fear and economic uncertainty created by the pandemic.
“The financial services sector is particularly susceptible to cybercrime given its crucial role of financial intermediation in a highly connected financial system. Aside significant financial losses, the sector is also exposed to potential compromise and loss of customer data, and disruption of operations, which undermine stakeholders’ confidence in financial system stability,” she said. CBN data showed that internet/online-banking and automated Teller Machine/ card -related fraud-types reported constituted 92.68 per cent of all the reported cases worth N15 billion yearly.
Other miscellaneous crimes such as fraudulent transfers/withdrawals, cash suppression, unauthorized credits, fraudulent conversion of cheques, diversion of customer deposits, diversion of bank charges, presentation of forged or stolen-cheques among others also made the list of malpractices. The deepening integration of digital technologies into almost every facet of people’s lives has transformed the way they communicate, socialize, learn do business and conduct financial transactions.
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