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SWIFT recommends Central Bank of Azerbaijan to provide information security - EXCLUSIVE

SWIFT recommends Central Bank of Azerbaijan to provide information security - <span style="color: red;">EXCLUSIVE

05 September 2016 15:24 (UTC +04:00)

Baku. Musa Ahmadov - APA-Economics. Central Bank of Azerbaijan has received a letter about the cyber crime, which the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication sends to its member organizations.

The Central Bank of Azerbaijan told APA-Economics that the letter recommends the member organizations to upgrade to the newest version of SWIFT software: “At the same time, the letter says security rules on usage of SWIFT network must be strictly obeyed, division of powers, identification and authentification issues must be controlled”.

Bank said that it has launched the Bank Certificate Services Center (BCSC) accredited on the basis of up-to-date hardware and software platforms in order to provide the information security in payment and other systems and the information is exchanged with the financial organizations by using e-certificates got from this center: “At the same time, modern methods are used to provide the information security in the payment systems integrated to SWIFT information resources and the newest version of SWIFT software is upgraded timely”.

The global bank messaging system SWIFT disclosed an unknown number of new attacks that have hit clients, including some that led to bank thefts.

SWIFT sent a private letter to clients that stated there have been more attacks detected since June when SWIFT first detailed plans to improve security. The first known attack on the SWIFT messaging system was in February when attackers nearly stole $1 billion from the Bangladesh central bank; however, a crucial spelling error caused the hackers to only get away with $81 million.

SWIFT said in the letter there have been more attacks detected since June, some of which were successful, but it did not detail how many attacks or how many bank thefts there have been. The banks were said to vary in size and location and the attackers used multiple ways to access the SWIFT messaging system.