NBP assures customers' financial data not compromised, systems repaired following cyberattack

The National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) assured on Sunday that customers' financial data has not been compromised and "has remained protected, confidential and secured", following a cyberattack on its IT infrastructure on night of Oct 29.

In a tweet on Friday, the State Bank of Pakistan had said that the NBP had "reported a cyber security related incident which is being investigated."

Subsequently, the NBP had issued a statement saying, “In the late hours of the 29th and early morning of the 30th October, a cyberattack on the NBP’s servers was detected which impacted some of its services."

In its latest statement on the situation, the NBP said it had countered the threats and repaired the affected parts of its systems and that "banking services including ATMs and the disbursement of salaries and pensions" will be possible on Nov 1.

The statement added that the bank's "branches will open as scheduled and facilitate customers to ensure that their banking requirements are met as best as possible".

Addressing the cyberattack itself, the bank said that its teams worked in collaboration with the "best-in-class specialist partners" over the last 48 hours to mitigate the situation. The statement expressed gratitude to various regulatory bodies for their support and guidance and said it would continue to work with various stakeholders as it normalises its services over the next few days.

Earlier this month, then Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin had informed the National Assembly that on an average the Federal Board of Revenue (FBR) portals were subjected to 71,000 cyber attacks every month.

This volume has, over a couple of years, increased sharply as tools and methods available with the hackers are more powerful and sophisticated, Mr Tarin had said in a written reply to a question from PPP MNA Raza Rabani Khar placed before the assembly on Wednesday.

from The Dawn News - Home https://ift.tt/2ZEpR9N