TAPAH, Dec 21 — The security system for the banking industry in the country needs to be constantly updated with the latest technology to prevent hacks and intrusions, says former inspector-general of police Tun Mohammed Hanif Omar.
He said although there was still no long-term solution to the issue, efforts should be made to address the threats which occurred globally.
“This (hacking of banking systems) is happening all over the world, even in the United States, China, Russia as well as other countries. No one knows for sure (how to prevent hackers) from obtaining classified information.
“So, we have to ‘keep up-to-date firewall security’ systems and all this requires huge expenses to ensure the existing system is safe to use,” he told reporters after the Retired Senior Police Association’s (Respa) charity visit to the Third Battalion of the General Operations Force (GOF) here today.
Mohammed Hanif was commenting on the statement of former hacker Aman Shah Ahmad who claimed that the coding in the security systems used by some banks in the country was just ‘copy and paste’ from previous ones, with some institutions using open source software and programmes which exposed them to the threat of hackers.
Aman Shah, 54, is a former banking executive who was sentenced to five years in prison in 1990, after being found guilty of criminal breach of trust involving tens of millions of Ringgit while working at a bank in Kuala Lumpur.
Earlier, Respa handed over a donation of RM30,000 to the families of the late Sergeant Baharuddin Ramli and Sergeant Norihan Tari, members of the GOF’s Third Battalion who were involved in a shooting incident with smugglers at the Malaysia-Thailand border last month.
In the incident at 3.10 am on Nov 24, Norihan was seriously injured while Baharuddin was killed. — Bernama