The West African central banks and financial institutions have lost as much as $5 billion in the last two to three years to cyber crimes and frauds, Akpan Ekpo, director general of the West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management said on Thursday.
Ekpo disclosed this at a high level seminar on cyber security framework for the sub-region’s financial institutions which held on the sidelines of the ongoing 2015 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in Washington DC, USA.
The seminar was to expose central bank governors and senior staff members of banks to the challenges of cyber fraud, adverse implications on their activities on the economies of the sub-region and proffer measures to mitigate them.
Ekpo said the training had become crucial because cyber fraud is up scaling and there is now the need to address the issue and find ways of tackling consequent immense problems which are affecting a lot of the banking and financial institutions in the sub-region.
Although he acknowledged that central banks in the sub-region try to be proactive but he said achieving tangible results have been difficult because the fraudsters seem to be ahead.
“Therefore they have to keep training, they have to keep improving in their ICT, and be proactive,” Ekpo told the participants, adding that “being equipped means being able to afford the resource to buy the necessary equipment to confront cyber fraud.”
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