DFS Secretary chairs meeting on Cyber Security in Financial Services Sector and Online Financial Frauds

Various agencies come on a single platform to share best practices to mitigate cyber-attacks and frauds

70 lakh mobile connections involved in cybercrime/ financial frauds reported through digital intelligence platforms disconnected so far

Rs. 900 crore defrauded money saved, benefitting 3.5 lakh victims

Various measures discussed and identified to safeguard citizens from financial frauds

The Secretary, Department of Financial Services (DFS), Ministry of Finance, chaired a meeting in New Delhi, to discuss issues related to cyber security in the financial services sector and increasing incidents of recent online financial frauds.

The meeting was also attended by Secretary, Telecom and senior officials of Department of Financial Services (DFS), Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), Department of Revenue (DoR), Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), Department of Telecom (DoT), Reserve Bank of India (RBI), Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), Indian Cyber Crime Co-ordination Center (I4C), National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), State Bank of India (SBI), Bank of Baroda,  Canara Bank, Punjab National Bank, HDFC Bank, ICICI Bank, IDFC First Bank, Airtel Payment Bank, Equitas Small Finance Bank, Google Pay India, PayTM, and Razorpay.

The Indian Cyber Crime Co-ordination Center (I4C), Ministry of Home Affairs, made a presentation on the latest statistics of digital payment frauds as reported in the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (NCRP), various sources of these financial frauds, modus operandi adopted by the fraudsters, including challenges faced to counter financial cybercrimes. Further, representatives from State Bank of India (SBI) made a brief presentation on the Proactive Risk Monitoring (PRM) strategy implemented by SBI. Besides, PayTM and Razorpay representatives also shared their best practices which has enabled them to mitigate such frauds.

The meeting took stock of the preparedness of the banks and other financial institutions in tackling the challenges arising from cyber security in the financial services sector, increasing trend of digital payment frauds, and deliberated on a focused approach to mitigate such cyber-attacks and frauds. It was noted during the deliberation that:

• 70 lakh mobile connections involved in cybercrime/ financial frauds reported through digital intelligence platforms have been disconnected so far.
• Rs. 900 crore defrauded money has been saved, benefitting 3.5 lakh victims

Some of the issues that were discussed included:

• Renewed focus on facilitating seamless coordination between Police, Banks and Financial Entities for real time tracking and blocking of defrauded money
• Bringing all financial institutions including NBFCs and major cooperative banks on ‘Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System (CFCFRMS)’ platform, wherein 259 financial intermediaries are already onboarded
• Strategy to tackle menace of mule accounts by banks
• Banks to improve the response time in handling the alerts on online financial frauds received from different agencies
• Appointment of regional/ state level nodal officers by the banks and financial institutions to cater to the requirements of law enforcement agencies
• Maintaining a central registry of onboarding of merchants and standardisation of KYC
• Whitelisting of digital lending apps through consultation with relevant stakeholders
• Status on implementation of recommendations of the Digital Lending Working Group including setting up of Digital India Trust Agency (DIGITA) and bringing a new legislation ‘Banning of Unregulated Lending Activities (BULA) Act’
• All stakeholders including banks and financial institutions to undertake more customer awareness and sensitisation programmes on digital payments security