K.S. Ramakrishnan, Chief Risk Officer, RAKBANK, explains to GN Focus what customers should consider when banking online.
What are the main pieces of advice you give your customers to help protect them from fraud?
Cyberattacks, financial crime, and fraud are becoming increasingly more targeted, intricate, and persistent. While technologies have made advances in risk management, cybersecurity, and fraud prevention, we always advise our customers to take additional precautionary measures.
Firstly, always use your own computer or use a trusted computer for banking purposes. We advise that our customers avoid using a shared or public computer when it comes to banking. Ensure that your computer is equipped with antivirus and a firewall to prevent any malware infection. Also update your computer regularly, especially the antivirus software, web browser and operating system.
Furthermore, please follow your bank’s SMS and email alerts with regards to security and data protection and pay attention to SMS and email transaction alerts. Always type out your bank’s website, for safety reasons. Do not use your banking password for anything else such as emails or social media etc. Check the information displayed regarding when the last time you logged into your account and make sure it matches. Lastly, periodically review your beneficiaries list and ensure that it matches beneficiaries that you added yourself.
When travelling, we recommend that our customers consider enabling a roaming feature so that you do not miss important notifications from RAKBANK. Also, never use any unsecure Wi-Fi access points.
We suggest that customers check the domain of the URL as well as the site before providing any details.
What can your customers do to ensure they are using a genuine RAKBANK website when they’re banking online?
We always advise that our customers type out the bank’s website. For safety reasons, never click on links received in emails or messages claiming to be from your bank. Use a secure connection, this is identified with a green area that is visible in the address bar along with https in the URL itself. We also suggest that customers check the domain of the URL as well as the site before providing any details. If you suspect that the site could be fraudulent, do not provide any details and report the site to your bank. For extra precaution, open a new browser window and visit the main page of the site you think you’re on, if it looks different, you are then likely to be dealing with a phishing site.
What are the most common forms of online fraud?
1. Phishing/ Vishing/ Smishing – Do not provide any confidential banking details over phone, messaging apps or SMS malware and ransomware
2. Email Spoofing – easily avoidable by simply using a reputed email service provider such as Gmail or Outlook
3. Shoulder surfing – consider banking from any of your devices where no one can see you typing over your shoulder
