Inadequate cyber security a major threat

Hyderabad: Legal practitioners say there is no legal sanctity attached to the security measures have been put into practice by the banks and other agencies, like the One Time Password method, which has been compromised on many occasions.

Mr Santosh Kumar, advocate, said, “Cyber security is a major concern and in a country like India getting access to the system of another person is not at all difficult at all since most of the individual computers run on pirated software.”
He said the use of mobile phone as a means to transfer funds was fraught with many dangers. A majority of the mobile phone users were not even aware of the functionalities of their phones, much less the vulnerabilities.

He said these vulnerabilities come to the fore in the event of misuse of digital transactions by criminals and the havoc that is created in terms of loss of money without the knowledge of the person.

He said RBI had recognised the risks stemming from insolvency of e-money institutions (in the specific case, the mobile operator) for customers and merchants.

He said, “The risk associated in terms of moving on to digital payment platforms without a robust legal framework are high.”

Mr S. Pradeep Kumar, a criminal lawyer, said that a person who has lost his hard earned money is at a loss on proceeding on the the matter, where he can get his grievance addressed and if he stands a chance to recover his money.