Cyber Frauds

Internet banking and its associated digital transformations have made lives easy for many who dreaded going to branches for carrying out regular banking transactions. Many tasks which were considered mundane were made easy with the clicks of a button. Both the bankers and the customers heaved a sigh of relief when technology helped in saving time and money. Right from account opening to every day transactions, the ease and the speed with which money could be transferred across boundaries had made lives simpler and people across spheres benefited.

Like two sides of the same coin, the boon for many also turned bane soon enough with fraudsters cashing in on the loopholes. Novel and unsuspecting ways of swindling money came into play and many people have fallen prey to these cyber frauds. Phishing, Vishing continue to be a cause of worry. Most of the time, money transfers happen in seconds and there is no common mechanism through which banks share information or stop further transfers from happening. More importantly, a customer who has just discovered that he has lost an amount doesn’t have a proper mechanism to stop further damages from happening. The first point of contact which a customer tries is to get in touch with the bank staff and most of the times, the staff themselves are ill equipped on how to deal with the same. People continue to receive calls to share OTP passwords and there is no common thread connecting Police and Bankers to nab such pranksters.

While the banks continue to send mailers/SMS warning customers about fraudsters as part of awareness drive, they need to put a mechanism in place to investigate /take up cases when such incidents are reported. Cyber laws need to be more stringent with separate cyber cell being set up to handle such cases. The banks need to have a common platform where information and modus operandi are shared. Also, in case of any eventuality, early detection and measures thereof need to be designed. The most common observation is that there is a spurt of cyber frauds during holidays. Each bank has to set up a cyber-cell working 24x7 (wherein ATMs also covered.) A common help line number which registers the complaints after checking the veracity also would be helpful. Also, one cannot discount the Anti-Money Laundering Solutions being deployed in banks which also can prevent such incidents from happening to a certain extent. All said and done, banks cannot afford to ignore the cyber frauds and banks having a strategy in place to counter the same definitely a step advanced than the ones who don’t.