No customers in Asia affected by cyberattack, says Citi

No customers in Asia affected by cyberattack, says Citi
By Rachel Kelly | Posted: 10 June 2011 2115 hrs

SINGAPORE: US banking group Citi said no customers in Singapore or Asia have been affected by the recent cyberattack on the bank. This was in response to a query by Channel NewsAsia on whether the bank has raised its security patches in Singapore to prevent similar attacks.

A Citibank spokesperson said: "Customer accounts established with Citibank Singapore have not been impacted in any way by the hacking incident reported in the US. Maintaining the confidentiality of our customers' information is a priority for Citibank."

Personal information, including names, account numbers and contact information like email addresses of around 200,000 Citi customers in North America was viewed.

While unaffected by the recent spate of security threats, Australian bank ANZ has decided to re-issue new RSA secureID tokens to all customers and staff currently using the technology.

ANZ has approximately 50,000 RSA tokens in use across Australia, New Zealand and the Asia Pacific region. Tokens will be replaced for all customers and staff in Singapore too.

"There will be no expense for ANZ customers as a result of this decision to replace the tokens," added an ANZ spokesperson.

Singapore bank DBS said it has several layers of security in place to protect its customers.

OCBC said it will continue to strengthen its defence to guard against evolving security threats while UOB added that it is actively engaged in assessing new technologies.

Analysts said this is needed as threats are constantly evolving.

Balaji Srimoolanathan, Program Manager of Aerospace, Defence and Security with Frost & Sullivan, said: "The type of attacks that are evolving today are completely different from a week ago or a couple of weeks ago.

"There are new kinds of attacks happening everyday, so the need for technology development is quite high in this market - unless banks are going to be able to provide open feedback and work closely with governments and technology providers, there is never going to be a solution to the problem."

-CNA/ac

- wong chee tat :)