Pakistan suffers its third massive Cyberattack which was endured by BankIslami. Once more Pakistan has been subject to Cyberattack from unknown sources, with this one targeting the banking system of Pakistan. With such a massacre to have took place BankIslami debit card holders will have to be very cautious while making any small or seemingly large transaction on the bank’s system. This Cyberattack took place just recently and according to BankIslami this is the biggest Cyberattack in the history of Pakistan. This Cyberattack took place on the 27th of October when BankIslami users supposedly got several messages regarding their Bank payment cards which were rumored to have been used in several different foreign countries and the loss has been quite significant on the people with an estimate loss of $6 million to the customers which is quite a big loss considering the economy of Pakistan and $6million is worth about at least Rs 75 to 80 crores.
Furthermore, The State Bank of Pakistan took measures into their own hands by immediately temporarily restricting the use of its card for “overseas transactions only” however the card holders have no such restrictions on transactions within Pakistan. This was the 3rd major Cyberattack on Pakistan while being the 2nd largest in terms of Banking systems of Pakistan. Other than BankIslami, Careem and Habib Bank ltd previously also faced such acts of robbery.
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Online experts have advised the ATM cardholders to change their ATM pins as soon as possible to avoid any such situations in the near future and to prevent online financial frauds. Moreover the officials who are involved in disaster management and damage control measures following the Cybersecurity attack are now estimating the financial loss of this Cyberattack.
Finally State bank of Pakistan has issued directives to all banks in the region of Pakistan and have asked them to give any feedback in case of any sort of abnormal activities which occur on the banking systems. The issues which have been directed are as follows
- Security measures on all IT systems including to those relating to card usage should be updated to meet any challenges in the future
- Resources are to be deployed to ensure the 24/7 real-time monitoring of card operations and transactions
- Immediate coordination with all payment schemes switch operators and media service providers the banks are integrated with to identify any sort of malicious activity of suspicious transactions
