The Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) has disclosed that it almost lost Kshs2 billion to hackers in 2020 when Covid 19 pandemic was ravaging the country.
The bank made the revelation on Thursday through its sustainability report which put the number of prevented cyber-attacks at 3,624 and other attempted fraud cases at 663.
“In 2020, the Group successfully prevented a theft of Sh2 billion, in attempted fraud, thanks to our robust cybersecurity systems,” KCB revealed.
The bank however did not say whether the fraudsters were local or foreigners.
According to the report, increased use of mobile money and Internet banking exposed the bank’s customers to cybercrime especially fraud and phishing attacks.
Data from the Central Bank shows a 52 percent rise in Kenya’s mobile money transactions to Sh3.26 trillion in the first half of the year.
Phising occurs when the fraudsters send legitimate-looking e-mails from trustworthy websites requesting personal and financial details from unsuspecting people.
When such a links are clicked, the victim is redirected to a counterfeit website where his/her data is collected and used for stealing money.
Some of the measures that one can use to avoid such cases include; avoid clicking such links, avoid logging into Wi-Fi networks that are open without security measures and finally avoid downloading applications into a personal before verifying them.
In 2019, The Directorate of Criminal Investigations (DCI) published posters with the faces and names of 130 suspects wanted for hacking into bank accounts in Kenya.
It is hard to quantify how much has been lost to online hacking with banks not readily giving the information but according to the police, there are hundreds of cases and billions of shillings lost in the last year alone.
RELATED STORY: Kenyan Hotel Awarded As The Best Hotel In The World.
