The National Bank of Kenya has lost about Ksh.29 million to hackers. The hacking incident is said to have happened on Wednesday 17th.
“We confirm that there was an attempted fraud in normal course of business on 17th January but the bank’s monitoring and security resources frustrated the attempt.’’ the company said in a statement released yesterday.
“The amount of attempted fraud is about KES 29 million and we are confident we will recover most of that money. Security are in pursuit of the fraudsters and investigations are ongoing.’’ the statement read.
The bank however says customer account have not been affected and dismissed the latest social media speculation on the potential loss as incorrect. Kenyans on social media are putting the figure lost by the bank at more than 300 million.
Read>> Kenyan companies accruing massive losses amidst rising cyberattacks
Of course this is something that is going to make Nation Bank customers worried about the safety of their money. Ksh.29 million is not little money and the hacking incident at The National Bank of Kenya puts to question the measures financial institutions have put in place to prevent fraud
Banks have become the leading target of cybercrime as people increasingly adopt the use of financial technology. In fact, according to Serianu’s Cybersecurity Report 2016, African countries lost at least $2 billion in cyber attacks in 2016. In Kenya alone, the public sector lost more than Sh5 billion from cyber attacks, with the financial services sector losing a whopping Sh4 billion.
A recent survey conducted by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International found out that banks and payment organizations globally are still finding it difficult to manage online financial fraud in today’s connected and complex technological landscape.
The survey showed that 41% of businesses have implemented an in-house cybersecurity solution and 45% rely on a third-party solution from their bank, to mitigate the risks. Still, 46% of companies have either only partially implemented a solution against financial fraud, or have not implemented one at all. Among financial organizations, only 57% have a dedicated anti-fraud security solution.
The National Bank of Kenya says its monitoring personnel intercepted the attempted fraud and that security officers are in pursuit of the fraudsters.
