Finance companies may have to invest significantly to keep cyber attackers at bay

As the country moves towards a cashless economy, companies operating in the financial services domain will have to develop preventive control mechanisms and significantly invest in reactive capabilities to keep cyber attackers at bay, a study has suggested. [caption id=“attachment_3868647” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Representational Image. Reuters[/caption] “Incorporating a more agile cyber risk management approach may enable such companies to more effectively harness the ongoing digital revolution to their advantage,” said the ASSOCHAM-PricewaterhouseCoopers joint study titled ‘Securing the cashless economy’ which was released here on Monday. “As the country is experiencing a digital revolution, the impact of this transformation makes it imperative for financial service players to revisit their cyber security resilience,” it said. The study said collective effort is needed to ensure preparedness for the new cashless economy. Measures like agile security practices, security of new perimeter mobility, securing hyper-interfaced environment, high velocity identification, containment and eradication, next generation authentication, augmented ecosystem control, protecting context-rich personally identifiable information (PII) and ubiquitous awareness will have to be re-examined to ensure adaptive and real-time cyber defence, it added. “More intelligent transaction monitoring will have to be carried out as part of continuous surveillance, besides crisis response and recovery strategies will have to step up along with the increased digital footprint,” the study said. “The need of the hour is a comprehensive, progressive and forward-looking cyber security strategy at the national level which bridges people, processes and technology, and requires us to deal with questions of technology, law and privacy,” it added.