The Deputy Governor, Bank of Uganda Michael Ating-Ego has called on the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) and Centenary Bank to tighten their noose on cyber security so as to encourage Ugandans to save for development.
He made the call during the launch of NSSF Smart Card in partnership with Centenary Bank and Visa at Kampala Serena Hotel in Kampala, where he revealed that although focus has been put on encouraging Ugandans to improve on financial inclusion and encourage savings, cyber security and the tedious customer regressive mechanisms such as complicated refund mechanism are major barriers to the adoption of digital payments.
The Deputy Governor said, “I therefore urge you to increase the cyber security defences and ensure that robust customer redresses are implemented if we are to grow these payment systems.”
Ating-Ego cited a study by Fireeye Cyber Security Inc that highlighted that the medium time it takes to detect a cyber intrusion is 78 days, noting, “Therefore risk management and sound corporate governance must be an integral part of the implementation initiative for this wonderful partnership. As a regulator, the safe and efficient functioning of payment systems and instruments g is a key component of financial sector stability.”
While responding to the call by Bank of Uganda, Richard Byarugaba, the Managing Director NSSF said that the Fund has put in a number of protocols to guard workers’ savings.
“I believe we have put in normal protocols to be able to protect ourselves, we have got a lot of updates to our systems, we got a lot of security that we put into place and I believe this is going to be protective, just as we have done with all our systems before,” Byarugaba said.
According to the Annual Police Crime Report 2021, the Force recorded a total of 258 cases compared to 256 cases in 2020 and these cybercrimes led to a loss of Shs4.719Bn and of this, only Shs110,140,000 was recovered.
