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Malaysia: Bank Negara to set up financial threat intelligence platform
KUALA LUMPUR: Bank Negara is developing a financial threat intelligence platform with the financial industry to fortify the country’s strength in countering cyber threats.
The platform, which is expected to be up and running by year-end, will collate, analyse and disseminate real-time information and trends to strengthen the detective capabilities of the industry against cyber threats.
Governor Datuk Nor Shamsiah Mohd Yunus added that a dedicated innovation lab would also be established at Sasana Kijang – the central bank’s knowledge and learning excellence centre – which will provide a collaborative environment for creating, elaborating and prototyping innovative solutions.
She stressed that higher order risks of cyber-attacks and operational disruptions are magnified in ways that everyone has yet to fully comprehend.
“Advancement in technology has and will continue to dramatically alter the way we behave, interact and transact.
“Much has been said about the benefits, but an increasing reliance on technology presents risks that we cannot ignore. This includes issues of data privacy, discrimination or biases and also displacement of certain segments within segments,” she said in her speech during the opening of Bank Negara’s MyFintech Week 2019.
Nor Shamsiah also said that beyond measures taken at an institutional level, there is a pressing need for the financial industry and the nation to provide an enabling and secure framework for technological innovation, and educate and empower the public to take advantage of innovations.
She added that the need to formulate a cohesive, coherent and comprehensive national strategy on cyber security was an urgent need.
“We can only play our intended role to support the broader economy if we are attentive to both strategic and operational considerations of risk,” Nor Shamsiah said, adding that increasing reliance and concentration on third-party service providers, including those located offshore, to support critical functions could also increase operational vulnerabilities in more unpredictable ways.
Demands of society for speed, convenience and cost-efficiency are at a point where substantial tensions already exist between pressures on financial institutions to accelerate the adoption of technology and the industry’s capacity to manage those risks effectively.
These tensions would only increase, moving forward, and managing them at an optimal level will be critical.
“It will call for changes to how financial institutions internally oversee and manage technology risks, both within and across their business activities, invest in hard and soft infrastructure and have much deeper collaboration across institutions and agencies,” Nor Shamsiah said.
Meanwhile, the central bank is also committed to playing its facilitative role to enable innovations to flourish in an enabling and safe environment, such as by building interoperable infrastructure and further differentiating its regulatory and supervisory approach to capture new sources and transmission of risks, while allowing room for experimentation and for firms to develop economies of scale.
Nor Shamsiah said the central bank is mindful that the calls it makes in regulating and supervising the industry can themselves, sometimes, restrain innovation.
A key priority for Bank Negara is to ensure that the regulatory and supervisory system is appropriately calibrated to encourage innovation, but also has the agility to shift gears when required to respond to new risks.
Source: https://www.thestar.com.my/business/business-news/2019/06/18/bank-negara-to-set-up-financial-threat-intelligence-platform/#pyJgqxXtQkUGY9Dx.99