New Delhi: Dr. Vivek Joshi, Secretary of the Department of Financial Services (DFS) under the Ministry of Finance, led a meeting in New Delhi today to follow up on the issues discussed in the previous meeting concerning cybersecurity in the financial services sector held on 28.11.2023 and to address the increasing incidents of recent online financial frauds. Senior officials from the Department of Financial Services (DFS), the Department of Economic Affairs (DEA), the Department of Revenue (DoR), the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA), the Ministry of Electronics & Information Technology (MeitY), the Department of Telecom (DoT), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the Indian Cyber Crime Coordination Center (I4C), the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI), Punjab National Bank (PNB), and State Bank of India (SBI) also participated in the meeting.
The meeting assessed the readiness of banks and other financial institutions in addressing the challenges posed by cybersecurity in the financial services sector, the growing trend of digital payment frauds, and the preparedness of all relevant stakeholders in this regard, while also reviewing the action points identified during the previous discussion.
During the deliberations, it was noted that:
i. The Department of Telecom (DoT) has developed अस्त्र (ASTR), an AI/ML-based engine, to detect mobile connections acquired with fake/forged documents. Approximately 1.40 lakh mobile handsets either linked to disconnected mobile connections or misused in cybercrimes/financial frauds have been blocked.
ii. DoT analyzed 35 lakhs Principal Entities sending bulk SMSs. Out of these, 19,776 Principal Entities involved in sending malicious SMSs were blacklisted, and 30,700 SMS Headers and 1,95,766 SMS templates have been disconnected.
iii. The Pratibimb portal, which plots the SIM and IMEI of suspected fraudsters in real-time, has enabled law enforcement agencies to identify and locate suspects. To date, more than 500 arrests have been made, around 3.08 lakh SIMs blocked, around 50 thousand IMEIs blocked, and 592 Fake Links/APK and 2,194 URLs blocked since April 2023.
The meeting also discussed various issues including:
· Onboarding Banks/Financial Institutions onto the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System (CFCFRMS) platform through API integration.
· Integration of the CFCFRMS platform with the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) with the aim of centralizing the platform to facilitate effective collaboration between Police, Banks, and Financial Institutions, allowing for real-time monitoring and prevention of fraudulent activities.
· Banks and financial institutions are required to phase out the use of regular 10-digit numbers and adopt specific number series such as ‘140xxx’ for commercial/promotional activities as prescribed by TRAI.
· Ensuring round-the-clock availability of resources to promptly address complaints will improve the fraud-to-hold ratio.
· Formulating an action plan/SOPs for returning funds to victims from fraudulent accounts.
· Banks and financial institutions are required to conduct additional customer awareness and sensitization programs in regional languages on the security of digital payments.
· Sharing information by Banks/Financial Institutions in a standardized format for ease of analysis by Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs).