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Better Safe Than Sorry: Indian Banks Must Up Their Cyber Security Game

Aayush Ailawadi and Alex Mathew find out whether Indian banks can cope with cyber attacks.



Pedestrians walk past a Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. bank ATM (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg) 
Pedestrians walk past a Kotak Mahindra Bank Ltd. bank ATM (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg) 

The debit card fraud that, according to the National Payments Commission of India has compromised the data of 32 lakh debit card holders across 19 Indian banks, shows that banks are under-prepared when it comes to dealing with cyber attacks, said Samir Shah, chief executive officer at U.S.-based cyber security firm Aurionpro.

According to Shah, banks in India still follow the system of “detect and protect”, which is not effective when dealing with malware. Malware, he said, remains undetected in a network for 145 days on an average.

A better system to follow, and one that is being employed by banks in the U.S., is one of “prevent and protect”.

Here is Aayush Ailawadi and Alex Mathew’s conversation with Samir Shah on the biggest debit card fraud in India, and what its implications are for the banking system as a whole.