Imagine yourself in a scary position when you wake up to a text message where you are informed that a chunk of money is transferred from your bank account to some unknown location. How would do react?
This is exactly what has shocked the customers of one of Pakistan’s leading financial institutions, Faysal Bank. Plenty of the customers were sent an email and an SMS alert about the withdrawal of a certain amount from their bank accounts without their information and knowledge.
The process of hacking is generally possible when the bank has a weaker cyber protective measure. This is not the first time Faysal Bank customers are going through a depressing phase. Similar case of hacking was reported last year in December when plenty of rupees were transferred to some unknown location from the bank accounts of Faysal Bank’s customers.
According to a Bank official, the bank failed to recover the money last time around and they had to compensate the customers from the bank profits within 40 days. Subject to anonymity, a senior Bank representative while talking to a website said:
“Skimming attacks cost hundreds of thousands of rupees to the bank in my region but this amount could be in millions considering the number of victims across the country”
Once a customer comes to know that he has fell prey to the hacker, the recovery process for the money is lengthy and strenuous due to the banking formalities. Bankers generally doubt the victims at the initial stages and investigate the matter thoroughly before compensating them. For this matter, a senior bank official stated that:
“We do compensate every customer who becomes victim of such incident. We as procedure investigate the matter and refund the money although the terms and conditions signed by customer with bank do not guarantee repayment of such loss of money”
The amount was not recovered the last time money was stolen. Moreover the hackers were not caught either. Faysal Bank’s reputation will surely get a hit after these skimming attacks as customer would start losing faith on their security abilities.
Moreover, insecure internet banking practices and weaker cyber protective measures generally tempt the hackers to steal the money. The most important aspect of a bank is that a customer demands security of his money. This is a wakeup call for the banks operating in the country to invest a good chunk of money on the security and protection customer data otherwise customer will start to lose faith.
The successive Faysal Bank incidents are notable indicators which points towards the increasing need of cyber security. The central authority of the concerned bank, as well as the Central Bank should look into such cases. Thorough investigations should be followed by proper research so that such heinous incidents do not take place in the future.
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