With the use of digital money increasing rapidly during the pandemic, it has become crucial for the financial sector to integrate security and improve their threat intelligence capabilities, according to cybersecurity experts.

According to the State Bank of Vietnam, last year nearly 374 million transactions worth more than VND22.4 quadrillion (US$974.5 billion) were made via the internet, up 8.3 per cent and 25.5 per cent from 2019.

Besides, nearly 918.8 million transactions worth nearly VND9.6 quadrillion were made via mobile phones, an increase of 123.9 per cent in volume and 125.4 per cent in value yea-on-year.

Lockdowns due to the pandemic have caused digital payments to skyrocket.

According to the 2020 Doing Business report released by the World Bank, Viet Nam ranked 70th out of 190 economies in the world, a drop of one spot from the preceding year.

But the country’s overall score improved by 1.44 points to 69.8.

According to a report by Kaspersky, Viet Nam was among the top 10 countries for banking malware last year. Many bank users encountered smishing in early 2021, something never witnessed before in the country.

Yeo Siang Tiong, Kaspersky’s general manager for Southeast Asia, said: “Digital transformation always presents new challenges, especially for banks and financial services. Viet Nam is on track for industrial revolution 4.0 and heading towards a cashless society. The financial sector is uniquely positioned to be a target of attacks regardless of reason because it is always where the money is.

“While it is a huge responsibility for banks and financial service providers to secure their systems, they can pilot their way to the future by building their cyberdefences and protecting their customers. In this case, technology will be the game-changer.

“Now more than ever, the financial industry needs the most intelligent solutions to detect and counteract complex threats that never seem to stop. Threat intelligence is something worth looking into for a financial player which really wants to get ahead of cybercriminals and mitigate the risks of cyberthreats to its business.”

Threat intelligence could identify and analyse cyberthreats targeting a business, and is about going through piles of data to spot real problems and deploy solutions specific to the problem, he said.

For industries like financial services, there are three basic things in which threat intelligence can be useful, according to the global cybersecurity company.

It helps prevent data loss by spotting cyberthreats and ensuring data breaches do not cause loss of sensitive information

It provides direction on safety measures and helps businesses put security measures in place against future attacks by identifying and analysing threats and spotting patterns used by hackers.

It informs others as cybersecurity experts share the tactics they have seen with the IT community to create a collective knowledge base against cybercrimes. — VNS