Vietnam has recorded an increasingly high number of bank fraud incidents. A group of criminals recently exploited the vulnerabilities of a website of an intermediary payment company to conduct a scam.

Meanwhile, many customers complain they have lost money in their bank accounts though they did not make transactions.

The National Cyber Security Center (NCSC), an arm of the Ministry of Information and Communication, reported that 10,220 attacks to information systems in 2018 occurred in Vietnam.

According to the Ministry of Public Security, in the first half of 2019 alone, thousands of computers were found infected with malware, while more than 2,500 websites and information portals with the Vietnamese national domain name were attacked.

According to the Ministry of Public Security, in the first half of 2019 alone, thousands of computers were found infected with malware, while more than 2,500 websites and information portals with the Vietnamese national domain name were attacked.

Finance security experts say personal information, passwords and customers’ financial information are valuable data for cyber crimes.

The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) admitted that the banking sector is the target of many attacks to steal information. The situation id more worrying as the banking sector has begun digital transformation and is striving for retail banking.

Experts say that the Vietnamese law on banking security has been updated frequently. Vietnam has the 2005 E-Transaction Law, the 2015 Law on Network Information Security. There are also legal documents issued by SBV on information system security in banking operations.

According to the Vietnam Information Security Asosciaiton (VNISA), the information security index in 2018 was 45.6 percent, which shows the index has improved year after year, though m improvement remains modest. The index measures investment policies, funding, management measures, technical solutions, practical activities and awareness of IT activities at banks.

Information security has become extremely important now, as banks are carrying out digital transformation. This is not just about simply providing digital products or distribution channels, but also digitizing internal processes, thus helping banks operate more effectively.

During the transformation process, mid-tier banks will face more problems than large banks. However, experts cite an interesting discovery: large banks do not always have higher information security index than medium-scale ones.

A VNISA report, for example, shows that the group of banks with high information security index includes Military Bank, Nam A and Tien Phong. Another report on information security index – Vietnam ICT Index – released by the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC), showed that Nam A is among the top banks, just second to BIDV. The next positions belong to larger banks such as Techcombank and VietinBank.

Vietnam ICT Index focuses on assessing the capacity of information technology development and application, while VNISA Index investigates the status of the network information security. 

Ha An

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