Kenya Cyber Security Report 2015 Cyber Security Perspective from the Financial Services Sector Edgar Mwandawiro | Head of Risk at Gulf African Bank C yber security remains a critical Naturally, this growth comes with concern for the banking corresponding cyber risks, which have industry. Players in the industry to be managed. As financial institutions have underscored the importance continue to invest in complex technology of securing corporate cyber assets infrastructure, strong asset management through commitment of extra funding principles must be implemented to to improve cyber security. The last ensure classification, ownership and couple of years have seen an increase in protection of those assets. While industry expenditure with the singular individual entity asset protection is aim of achieving effective cybersecurity indispensable, collective, inter-party and operational and strategic controls and industry related initiatives are crucial. An planning. improvement in legislation surrounding As technologies continue to expand to cloud infrastructure, assets protection meet customer demands, electronic and digital forensics is urgently required. access to customer information and The quest to provide customer convenience and aggressive marketing The Government Anti-Fraud authorities must play a more active and independent role while carrying out banking/financial fraud investigations and ensure cases come to conclusion on time to the benefit of the defrauded financial institutions and the ultimate customers. data they continuously pose significant by financial institutions has seen Financial institutions are still suffering technology-enabled institutions large cyber fraud incidents, which continuously interface and integrate have resulted in direct financial loss their internal systems with external through the loss of customer funds party systems to leverage on a variety of and confidential customer information, business opportunities and operational perpetrated by customers, insiders or efficiency. Uptake of cloud and managed outsourced partners. In response to services has seen financial institutions this, many financial institutions have better manage their capital expenditure put in place vendor risk management and concentrate on their core business policies to address outsourced partners’ The success of all cybersecurity projects of providing financial solutions and risks, conduct background screening for and strategies lies in setting the tone services. Mobile and internet banking employees, and KYC for customers. These from senior management through services tailored to suite local and global have improved their internal systems establishment of enterprise cybersecurity customers have seen financial institutions controls, and enabled these institutions policies which will build a strong invest heavily on e- channel platforms to proactively monitor transactions and foundation for cybersecurity principles, and on strategic partnerships with employee behaviour change dynamics governance, guidelines, procedures and telecommunication players. as part of critical elements to remedy the processes. challenges but also opportunities for business development. Therefore, the ultimate test should be how to enable customers access their data securely, what kind of information will/should be accessible and when allowed, how to secure the data while at rest and/or in transit. current cyber fraud prone environment. 32