Soaring cyber attacks threaten payment industry in Kingdom

Manama : “The increasing incidence of cyber attacks in payment industry has exposed possible shortcomings in banks’ local security environment,” said CBB Director of Information Technology Yousef Al Fadhel.

The situation has evolved the need for a collaboration between the financial institutions to fight against the threats, he said.

He was opening a workshop for the SWIFT User Group community organised by the Central Bank of Bahrain (CBB).

“Although SWIFT customers are individually responsible for data security within their own environments, security of the payment systems industry as a whole is considered as a shared responsibility,” he said.

The purpose of the workshop was to inform participants about the release of a set of core security controls. The 90-odd participants from Bahrain’s SWIFT member banks attended the workshop.

Bassam Khalifa, Senior Account Director Middle East at SWIFT, presented the ‘customer security programme’.