Special Correspondent :
The central bank last week formed a four-member cyber security team amid growing concern over cyber hacking in its systems, which often lead to financial misappropriation through SWIFT payment platform.
Formation of the central bank’s team is the result of recommendation from the Ministry of Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology, officials said.
In 2016, unknown hackers stole more than $81 million from the Bangladesh Bank’s account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
The members of the team are: Systems Manager Md Ishak Miah, Senior Systems Analysts Md Moshiuzzaman Khan, Senior Maintenance Engineer Md Tauhidul Alam and Maintenance Engineer Fahad Zaman Chowdhury.
“The cyber security team will evolve practical approach to address the cyber security concern and evaluate and monitor every threat emanating from every source round the clock,” a high official of Bangladesh Bank told The New Nation yesterday.
He said, the team will also review the inherent and emerging cyber threat in the central bank’s computer systems and take proactive measures to address the threats.
The central bank earlier issued an alert of a major cyber attack on the local banks in which international hackers may break their vaults and move out money within or outside the country through use of fraudulent wire transfer.
The alert was initially issued following a letter signed and sent on August 9 by Mustafa Jabbar, Minister for Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology, to the Ministry of Finance.
In the letter, he said information picked up from the cyber security and sensor system that has been set up at Bangladesh Bank shows hackers have installed malware at important computers of the central bank and regularly passing information of cyber security around the vault to hackers stationed in Romania, Japan and China.
It said since the central bank is yet to set up a cyber security team, necessary preventive measures being delayed making the system vulnerable to hackers.
Later, the Finance Ministry recommended the central bank to form a cyber security team in light with the concern of the Posts, Telecommunications and Information Technology Ministry.
Reading the central bank’s vulnerability to cyber attack, the BB official said, “We’re aware of the situation and closely monitoring the bank’s cyber systems to prevent cyber attacks and unauthorized access to the bank’s payment switch by cyber criminals.”
He further said that cyber attacks today are multi-pronged and it can start with a malware being downloaded into a system or via a web application being hacked.
“BB is developing and maintaining cyber security requirements aligned with global best practices to protect its data center following malware related security breach,” the official said.
