By Ruth Abbey Gita-Carlos
MANILA — Malacañang on Thursday called on banks to come up with new policies to mitigate cyber fraud and attacks.
This, after financial institutions supervised by the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas lost PHP5.82 billion from cyberattacks in 2024, higher by 2.6 percent from the recorded PHP5.67 billion worth of losses in 2023.
“In line with that, atin din pong hinihikayat na magkaroon din po ang mga bangko, mabago ang kanilang mga internal policies patungkol po dito (we are also encouraging the banks to change their internal policies regarding this),” Presidential Communications Office Undersecretary and Palace Press Officer Claire Castro said in a press briefing.
Castro emphasized the need to strengthen the financial sector’s cyber resilience.
She said there will also be infomercials and information dissemination to help the public not to fall victims to scams.
“Nag-e-evolve po talaga ang paggawa ng krimen. So, kailangan din po ang mga proyekto natin, ‘yong ating mga panuntunan dito ay dapat nag-a-upgrade din po (Crime is really evolving. So, our projects, our rules here must also be upgraded),” she said.
Under the BSP circular, all supervised financial institutions are mandated to submit regular and event-driven reports covering technology-related information, as well as incidence of major cyberattacks.
The number of reports on crimes and losses submitted by supervised institutions has increased from 40,780 in 2024 to 40,572 in 2023, according to the central bank’s data.
Top cybersecurity risks faced by BSP-supervised institutions last year include phishing, “card-not-present” fraud, account takeover or identity fraud, and hacking.
Estimated losses due to phishing and card-not-present fraud rose to PHP1.8 billion and PHP1.5 billion, respectively, the BSP said. (PNA)
