BE/RBINOTE/61/2019
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in a release has said that they are coming out with measures to make ATMs more secure. In its Statement on Development and Regulatory Policies released during its bi-monthly monetary policy review, the central bank said that it will introduce BASELINE CYBER SEUCIRTY SECURITY CONTROLS FOR ATM SWITCH APPLICATION SERVICE.
RBI’s Statement:
RBI has stated that since many banks and other regulated entities are other regulated entities are dependent upon third-party application service providers for shared services for ATM Switch applications, they are exposed to the payment system landscape and are, therefore, exposed to the associated cyber threats. Due to this, “it has been decided that certain baseline cyber security controls shall be mandated by the regulated entities in their contractual agreements with these service providers.”
The central bank said that the guidelines would “require implementation of several measures to strengthen the process of deployment and changes in application softwares in the ecosystem; continuous surveillance; implementation of controls on storage, processing and transmission of sensitive data; building capacity for forensic examination; and making the incident response mechanism more robust.”
Reason for Announcing this measure:
This measure comes in the light of numerous instances of ATM frauds that are being reported across the country. A recent Economic Times news report stated that as many as 61 ATM frauds have been reported, mostly from Jadavpur area of Kokata, where fraudsters used two ATM machines of Punjab National Bank to dupe customers. Fraudsters have withdrawn nearly Rs 14 lakh in several transactions made between November 28 and December 4.
RBI has repeatedly been asking banks to improve security measures with regards to their ATMs what with instances of ATM cloning, phishing, etc on the rise.
Suggestions to Customers:
In July 2017, the RBI had issued guidelines regarding customers’ liability in unauthorized electronic banking transactions. Till the central bank comes with these new security measures, if you do fall victim to ATM fraud, you can read what recourse you can take here.
RBI in its statement also has said that it will issue detailed guidelines in this regard by 31 December, 2019.
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