The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) is developing a risk-based cyber security framework for deposit money banks (DMBs) and payment service in partnership with stakeholders in the financial industry.
Statistics put the cost of cyber-crime globally at $700 billion annually, a figure projected to rise to about $2 trillion by 2019, due to the rapid digitisation of consumer lives and company records.
In the case of Nigeria, about N198 billion is said to be lost to the ever-increasing cases of cyber crimes per annum usually perpetrated through the financial system.
The Deputy Governor, Financial System Stability (FSS), CBN, Mrs. Aishat Ahmad, who spoke in Abuja, Tuesday at the 2018 CBN-JP Morgan Chase Cyber Security Conference, said the CBN was committed to strengthening the regulatory and supervisory framework for cyber risk and encouraging realistic vulnerability testing and contingency planning for regulated institutions.
Ahmad, who represented the CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele, at the conference, which dwelt on “building cyber resilience,” stated that in partnership with stakeholders “in the financial industry we are developing a Risk Based Cyber Security Framework for deposit money banks and payment service providers and internally, we have relied on instruments of automation, artificial”.
According to her, new conveniences of modern technology have ushered in complex security challenges and cybercrime.
“These range from identity and intellectual property theft, phishing, email spamming, virus dissemination, to sophisticated hacking and theft by digital crime syndicates.
“These developments have led to a significant rise in the global cost of cybercrime,” Ahmad said.
A recent study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), she added, estimated global annual losses from cyber-attacks at close to nine per cent of banks’ net income or around $100 billion.
“And in a severe scenario, where the frequency of attacks are twice as high as currently experienced and with greater contagion, losses could be as high as $350 billion,” the CBN deputy governor said.
She noted that there was no gain saying the fact that automation and technological innovations over the past decade had impacted almost every facet of human endeavour.
Technology, she added, had transformed the learning, communication, service delivery as well as the way financial transactions are conducted.
