Till date we have seen news posts regarding Russian intelligence launching cyber attacks on the West. But Sberbank, a largest money lender in Russian Federation, has released a report that claims that the loss incurred by Russian companies because of cyber attacks in 2020 was 3.6 trillion rubles or $49 billion in international currency.
In the past few years, the Putin led nation has been encouraging public to go digital while making monetary payments and is also seen giving many encouraging offers to its citizens to switch to bank payment cards to limit cash use on a physical note. This not only curbs financial frauds but also helps in putting a block to the shadow economy.
However, like every tech implementation has its own pros and cons, the digital payment trend is also witnessing a drawback. As per the state funded Sberbank report, the crime rate involving bank frauds has gone up by 500% this year.
Stanislav Kuznetsov, the chairperson of Sberbank of Russia, confirmed the report and stated that most of the targets in Russian banks were private entities and the public ones are being secured and well protected by the government.
“Most private companies are vulnerable to cyber threats of modern age, and it includes client accounts to financial data and other sensitive documents”, stated Stanislav.
He also stated that they are around 2.3 million dark accounts in Russia that offer a privilege to access stolen data.
Bi.Zone, a Cybersecurity unit funded by Sberbank stated that Russia is facing cyber crime from regions such as Ukraine, Venezuela, and Germany apart from the threats from its own soil. Now, to the uninitiated, the said cyber unit has been protecting Sberbank from many threats from the past few years.
Phone Frauds are reported to have increased by 80% in this year, as estimates are in that Russians have lost over 10 billion rubles because of the said fraud- as per the data compiled in between Dec’19 to Dec’2020.
Note- As per the data analyzed by the Russian Central bank, over half a million bank transactions were tagged to be unauthorized in the past 14 months, leading to a loss of 6.4 billion rubles stolen from private banks.
