‘No room for complacency in cybersecurity’

MANILA, Philippines — There is no room for compla­cency when it comes to cyberse­curity despite the tapering off in the number of attacks compared to the earlier days of the com­munity quarantine, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP) said.

In a virtual press confer­ence, BSP Governor Benjamin Diokno said the central bank continues to strengthen its digi­tal financial supervision by enhancing its regulatory frame­work, adopting supervisory technology and implementing capacity-building measures.

“These initiatives will fur­ther bolster the BSP’s capabil­ity to foster the stability of the financial system amid rising digital transactions. This is in line with our broader ef­forts to establish supervisory reforms suitable for ‘the new economy,” Diokno said.

He said the central bank is transitioning toward the use of the Supervisory Assessment Framework (SAFr) which fa­cilitates risk-focused and cali­brated supervision according to a BSP-supervised financial institution (BSFI)’s business model and relative importance to the financial system.

Also in the pipeline are issuances on digital banking, cloud computing, virtual as­set service provider and the cybersecurity maturity model.

“These reforms aim to sup­port the digital transformation of BSFIs, including financial technology players, while pro­moting sound cyber risk man­agement,” the BSP chief said.

Diokno said cyberthreats predominantly in the form of phishing emails and mali­cious websites with a spin on COVID-19 increased during the earlier days of the lock­down when Luzon was placed under enhanced community quarantine.

As a result, the BSP and financial institutions launched targeted cybersecurity aware­ness campaigns to combat phishing and social engineer­ing attacks.

“They have likewise inten­sified their surveillance moni­toring of this cyberthreats, including implementation of tighter network controls such as stringent firewall set­tings and point protection and whitelisting of websites or applications, among others,” Diokno said.