CBN Deploys Technology to Tackle Cybercrime

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 to combat cybercrime.

Deputy Governor, Financial System Stability (FSS) for CBN, Mrs. Aishat Ahmad revealed at the 2018 CBN-JP Morgan Chase Cyber Security Conference that the CBN is committed to strengthening the regulatory and supervisory framework for cyber risk and encouraging realistic vulnerability testing and contingency planning for regulated institutions.

This is part of effort to combat the global increase in the cases of Cybercrime in Nigeria. Statistics puts the cost of cyber-crime globally at $600 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.

Mrs Ahmad explained that new conveniences of modern technology have ushered in complex security challenges like identity and intellectual property theft, phishing, email spamming, virus dissemination, to sophisticated hacking and theft by digital crime syndicates. She noted that a recent study by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimated global annual losses from cyber-attacks at close to nine per cent of banks’ net income or around $100 billion and that 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.

Ahmad who represented the CBN Governor, Mr. Godwin Emefiele at the conference which dwelt on “Building Cyber Resilience,” stated that in partnership with stakeholders, the bank would deploy technology to solve various challenges affecting the sector, as like other areas, automation and innovations over the past decade has affected learning, communication, service delivery as well as the way financial transactions are conducted.