India's 'Debit Card' Wake-Up Call !

(pc-Google Images)

The recent data breach of debit cards is said to be the largest rupture in the country’s banking system to date. The massive breach affected 3.2 Million Indian people and posed a tougher question on cyber security this time.

The government and financial sectors failed to detect the data breach. Churning out various reasons for the possible malware attack, it is suspected that institutions failing to share information with each other, led to cascading failures, permitting the breach to continue for a while.

Banking sector professionals, who are closely involved in dealing with the current crisis, pointed out that there was no alert from the Information Sharing and Analysis Centre (a body under Reserve Bank of India, which is tasked to connect banks to share information about threats to avoid cyber-attacks) about the massive debit card data breach. Similarly, the Security Operations Centres with the banks didn’t picked up the debit card data breach. As a result, most banks treated complaints about debit and credit card fraud as isolated incidents.

To fight cyber terrorism, the public and private sectors must combine forces to find symbiotic ways to tackle it. They should work to create new platforms, strengthen existing platforms, and coordinate these platforms to increase information-sharing and improve investigations and prosecutions. The sector should discuss and take action in issues related to cyber crime, such as encryption, cloud servers, data access and protection of privacy, to find appropriate solutions.

This data breach has come as a wake up call for India. Clearly, banks will have to monitor such breaches ahead, if they have to prepare themselves for the future.