UPDATE: Sberbank: Russia’s cybercrime loss to spike to 1.5 tln rbl in 2 yrs

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MOSCOW, Oct 20 (PRIME) -- Losses of Russian companies and citizens incurred by cyberattacks will quadruple in two years to more than 1.5 trillion rubles, Sberbank, the country’s biggest bank, said on Friday in a presentation.

The country is undergoing booming digitalization that attracts cybercriminals hunting for more than 250 million banking cards, individual accounts in Internet banks, and large industrial and power companies, among others.

“Sberbank is target number one for hackers; we understand it very well, and Russia is the floor that allows hackers to feel quite at ease,” Deputy Chairperman Stanislav Kuznetsov said.

The country has a weak legal base against hackers, which does not meet today’s challenges. The law does not have the “cybersecurity” term. “We actively for adding these challenges, terms to the law,” Kuznetsov said.

Sberbank is designing a platform to protect the bank, its clients and partners from any cyber risks on a new level of guarantees, he said.

“We do not exclude that the level of development of this platform will be as high as to provoke interest from our foreign partners. Technologically, we see interest from other companies, corporations from other states, and we don’t rule out that they would join this platform and have protection from cyber risks. It’ll be unique,” Kuznetsov said.

The world had 40 million cybercriminals in 2016 with almost 600 million committed crimes.

(57.5706 rubles – U.S. $1)

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