NBP cyberattack

The National Bank of Pakistan (NBP) is claiming that the cyberattack on the bank that had been affecting services since it occurred late last week had not compromised any customer or financial data. However, while it is difficult to determine the scale of the attack from the information released to the public, we must note that NBP could not restore all affected services for at least two days, later saying that it would restore most services by Monday. The bank claims it was working with the “best-in-class specialist partners”, which may reflect the severity of the hack.

There is also a credibility problem for the public when it comes to financial data held by Pakistani government institutions. The recent FBR hack and the bungled response that led to the FBR chairman’s sacking is still fresh in our minds. In October, Finance Minister Shaukat Tarin told the National Assembly that the FBR was subjected to about 71,000 cyberattacks every month, adding that the attacks have been increasing and getting more sophisticated.

We assume banks are facing similar threats, but unlike the FBR, they are rarely held responsible when attacks succeed. It is also important to note that NBP is one of three Domestic Systemically Important Banks. This means that it is ‘too big to fail’ — the entire national economy could collapse if something goes wrong at NBP. That makes it even more important that we are made aware of what really happened and for action to be taken against the management if negligence was involved.

To illustrate how impactful even a few days of problems could be at NBP, Monday is also November 1, when the payday rush to the bank for millions of people begins. NBP is responsible for salary and pension payments to millions of current and former government and semi-government employees, along with many more employees of private organisations. Imagine the impact on people living paycheck-to-paycheck or those without secondary accounts in other banks or substantial cash at home would go about paying their bills.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 2^nd, 2021.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.