SBP issues directives to banks after Bank Islami got hit by Major Cyber Attack

State Bank of Pakistan: Bank Islami got hit by a major Cyber Attack and a massive breach of 6.5 Million USD where user Debit Cards and PINs were stolen and published on Dark web for sale.

State Bank of Pakistan issued Directives to All the Banks in Pakistan

As a result of the security breach of payment cards of one of the banks in Pakistan yesterday and their unauthorized use of different delivery channels i.e. ATMs and POS in different countries.

The bank has temporarily restricted usage of its cards for overseas transactions.

The State Bank has instructed the bank to take all necessary measures to trace the vulnerability and precautionary measures to be taken by customers.

Further, State Bank has also issued directives to all banks to foster arrangements to ensure the security of all payments cards in the country and monitor on real-time basis usage activity of their cards, especially overseas transactions.

SPB will continue to assess these developments in coordination with bands and take further measures if required.

The following directives have been issued to all the banks in Pakistan to ensure that:

1.  Security measures on all IT system including those related to card operations are continuously updated to meet any challenges in the future.
2. Resources are deployed to ensure the 24/7 real-time monitoring of card operations related systems and transactions.
3. Immediately coordinate with all the payments schemes, which operators and media services providers the banks are integrated with to identify any malicious activity of suspicious transaction.

In case of any unusual incident, banks are advised to immediately report SBP.