Manama (UNA-OIC) – The General Council for Islamic Banks and Financial Institutions (CIBAFI), the global umbrella of Islamic financial institutions, held on Tuesday a webinar on “Cybersecurity: A Rising Risk with Important Implications on the Financial Sector’s Resilience”.
The webinar was held in collaboration with Darktrace, an AI company that uses cybersecurity solutions to identify, prevent, and eliminate insider threats.
CIBAFI’s Global Islamic Banker’s Survey (GIBS) Report, reported on banks’ growing concerns over Cybersecurity risk due to the movement towards digitalization and automation in the Islamic banking industry.
The COVID-19 pandemic has further advanced this digital transformation as banks adopted financial technologies to meet the increasing demand for online products and services. Moreover, banks are facing some operational challenges that contributed to an increased Cybersecurity risk, for example, business execution and system failures as well as business disruption due to changes in employee working arrangements.
These facts encouraged CIBAFI to organize this webinar with Darktrace, which gathered financial services industry and subject matter experts from different countries. The webinar discussed the major threats and the main factors that have posed serious challenges to Cybersecurity in the digital banking sector.
In his opening speech to the webinar, CIBAFI Secretary-General Dr. Abdelilah Belatik highlighted how the continuous implementation of technology in various aspects of financial institutions’ operations has also heightened the risk of cybersecurity.
Belatik also stressed CIBAFI’s commitment to raising awareness on these increasingly important aspects of the industry by continuously delivering a series of events, issuing publications and establishing the CIBAFI Innovation and Technology Group.
The first session witnessed a presentation from Darktrace on different useful cases on how digital acceleration has reshaped the threat landscape; what are the major cybersecurity challenges faced by financial institutions; and the different approaches to security in finance.
The webinar concluded with a panel session on “Neutralizing Cyberattacks: Strategies, Measures, and Trends”, where Darktrace, along with other industry experts examined the growth in speed, sophistication, and scale of cyberattacks. With offensive Artificial Intelligence (AI) on the horizon, the financial services sector will continue to be challenged to protect sensitive data and systems.
As threats emerge, it is clear that a new approach to cybersecurity is needed. Therefore, this interactive panel session has witnessed an experience sharing on the current strategies and approaches to counter cyberattacks by financial institutions and studied their weaknesses to identify new approaches for better resilience against cyberattacks.
The session witnessed an interactive dialogue among the panelists: Founder and CEO, EDX Labs Mirza Asrar Baig; Regional Director for Middle East & Africa at Darktrace Roly Stride; and Head of Enterprise Architecture, AlbarakaTech Global Murat Gökten. The discussion was moderated by Senior CIBAFI Research Analyst Rachid Ettaai.
The above CIBAFI initiative aims to raise awareness and support sustainability and innovation within the Islamic financial services industry (IFSI). CIBAFI will continue providing specific activities and initiatives which promote sustainability best practices and facilitate cooperation between members and institutions of common interest.
