By Yakubu LAAH InvestAdvocate

Lagos (INVESTADVOCATE) – The United Bank for Africa Plc (UBA) Monday announced its fighting cyber crimes through the setting up of an E-Banking Security Centre.

This is contained in a Statement by Nasir Ramon, Head of Media of the Bank and made available to InvestAdvocate in Lagos Nigeria.

This is coming on the heels of the commissioning of a state-of-the-art Security Operations Centre (SOC) & Forensic Laboratory that provides all round security monitoring for all electronic banking transactions; the first of its kind for a bank in Nigeria and sub-Saharan Africa.

According to UBA, the SOC empowers the bank to securely deliver electronic banking services to its esteemed customers, effectively manage all form of information security threats and provide a robust protection to its systems, network and electronic banking channels.

Ibedu Onyebuchi, Deputy Director, Banking Supervision, Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), at the commissioning of the E-Security Centre commended UBA for the initiative and affirmed the centre is an important milestone in the industry that must be emulated by other banks because of the global threats to electronic banking.

“UBA has taken a bold step in securing its customers, knowing that banking cannot be practiced without adequate control and sound risk management systems,” Onyebuchi said.

On his part, Phillips Oduoza, Group Managing Director/CEO, UBA Plc, said as a leading bank in the deployment of electronic banking channels, made a deliberate decision to invest in a robust information security infrastructure, processes and skilled personnel as an effective way to manage information security threats.

According to him, any serious banking institution that wants to succeed in this digital age cannot afford to ignore information security as any major compromise of bank’s system and network has potentials for colossal damage.

“We partnered with top Information Security Organization that worked with the bank to upgrade our information security infrastructure in Nigeria and 18 African countries where we have presence. The drive towards cashless economy and migration of customers from banking halls to channels, demands that we put in place systems and processes that would protect our customers and the bank hence the establishment of this centre,” Oduoza said.

While Sam Okenye, Group Head, IT Risk Management of the Bank said that the deployment of fraud detection solution in the SOC and the 24 hours, seven (7) days a week monitoring would help guard against fraud and also protect customers against e-channel fraud.

Okenye further affirmed that the bank is already reaping the benefit of the investment going by the number of blocked cyber attacks, Phishing sites, shutdown, blocked attempted card fraud and the protection against systems/network intrusion. “With our current Security Infrastructure, we can know what is happening in our systems and network real-time. We can detect the sources of blocked attacks and also timely uncover any weakness in our network and systems for appropriate response,” he said.