Following the recent Cyber Security conference in Hong Kong the city’s regulator is set to launch a three-month evaluation scrutinising online dangers to banks.
Planned to ensure banks are ready to face online threats the Hong Kong Monetary Authority (HKMA) has begun a three-month consultation looking into the growing threat to banks through targetted cyber intrusions.
Denial of Service Attacks
The HKMA said there were 11 million online banking accounts in Hong Kong during 2015, this generated 17 million transactions worth HK$7.3 trillion on average each month.
While the authority said cases of cyberattacks causing actual or substantial disruption of services or losses were rare, it recorded 35 cases of fraudulent banking websites, applications and phishing emails last year. It also recorded 19 cases of distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks, which were malicious attempts to paralyse computer systems.
Few Attacks Reported
Hong Kong publication the South China Morning Post reports that the authority’s chief executive Norman Chan Tak-lam said at the recent Cyber Security Summit that the city’s financial sector could not be complacent, even though there were very few cases of serious cyberattacks reported in the past in Hong Kong.
This new policy drive has been given the title of, «The Cybersecurity Fortification Initiative.»
