Indian Prime Minister’s former cyber security advisor says Indian banks are fundamentally unsafe

• Banks need to strengthen their ICT infrastructure and architecture to avoid falling prey to cyber attacks, Rai told Business Insider.
• Gulshan Rai, Former National Cyber Security Co-ordinator, Government of India said banks, especially Co-operative banks need to immediately define their Security Operation Centers.
• They need to put blockades to make it difficult for cyber criminals to get into their systems, he added.

Indian banks are increasingly falling prey to cyber attacks and there is an immediate need for them to strengthen their tech infrastructure and overall architecture, according to Gulshan Rai, Former National Cyber Security Co-ordinator, Government of India.

Rai was addressing members of the banking fraternity at an event organized by The Maharashtra State Co-operative Banks Association (MSCBA) and cyber security startup Sequretek. MSCBA had recently partnered with Sequretek and announced a comprehensive enterprise cyber security program for co-operative banks in Maharashtra.

“Today our banks’ ICT infrastructures are vulnerable because their architecture isn’t strong. They follow a flat network architecture. Banks need to reorient their architecture,” Rai told Business Insider.

Using an analogy, he further explained, “When you build a house, you take utmost care to ensure that you have safety measures at different steps. Banks need to do something similar. There need to have an architecture that puts blockades at a number of places, to make it difficult for cyber criminals to get into their systems.”

Even private banks have not made adequate progress

“There is an immediate need to define Security Operation Centers (SOCs). While most private banks have SOCs in place, the structure needs to be defined properly. Moreover, co-operative banks that do not have any of these centers in place need to start investing in them,” according to Rai.

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