Report: Russia’s Sberbank to offer banks cybershield to face hackers

MOSCOW, Sep 26 (PRIME) -- Russia’s Sberbank, the country’s biggest bank, is cooperating with the Federal Security Service while the lender is crafting a nationwide cybershield for use by other financial bodies that it says are woefully unprepared to fight off hackers, Bloomberg reported Monday.

“As a rule, what usually happens is this: they beg us to come, help, and clean it up,” Stanislav Kuznetsov, Sberbank’s deputy chief executive in charge of cybersecurity, said in an interview. “We come and clean it up, but there are times when the very next day they’re infected again.”

While the U.S. accuses state-backed Russian hackers of stealing computer data to influence the presidential elections, officials in Russia say banks are the targets for increasingly sophisticated online crime.

Police made their biggest breakthrough against hackers in June when they arrested 50 members of an alleged cybergang that stole more than U.S. $45 million from Russian banks. Malware used by Russian and eastern European cybergangs was also implicated in a string of bank heists this year that culminated in the theft of $81 million from the Bangladeshi central bank.

Sberbank, which holds nearly half of retail deposits in Russia, spends about $23.4 million annually on cyberdefense. By comparison, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. spends $600 million annually.

Kuznetsov said the bank does not yet charge for helping other institutions. That may change if discussions on a joint anti-fraud monitoring system are successful.

An official with knowledge of the situation said Sberbank’s platform for other banks will be a commercial product working in line with the central bank’s proposed methodology.

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