Stakeholder in the judiciary, financial and information technology sectors have called for more proactive measures to tackle electronic related fraud in the country.The calls were coming on the heels of statistics by the Nigeria Inter Bank Settlement System Plc (NIBSS) that the country has already exceeded the e-fraud projection for 2014 with several billions of naira lost.In her keynote address at the 5th annual Payment Systems & Fraud Conference 2014 organised by Electronic Payment Providers Association of Nigeria (E-PPAN), Justice Oluwafunmilayo Olajumoke, chief judge of Lagos State, identified e-payment industry as prone to manipulations and attacks by fraudster’s insider and outsider attack, therefore, it has become imperative for the criminal justice sector to develop the appropriate tools and strategies for combating e-crimes and e-fraud.While calling for improved efforts among the law enforcement agents in the presentation of cases for trial, especially as regarded electronic fraud, Justice Olajumoke, who was represented by Justice Atinuke Ipaye of the High Court of Lagos, said, although the evidence act has helped in the trial of cyber cases, but of necessity, “both the investigators and the prosecutors are the two sides of the same coin.“They must work together, pay great attention to the detail and be meticulous to ensure that their investigations will stand up to the scrutiny in the court room and do everything by the book”.As a way forward, the guest speaker said, “The role of the judiciary as ‘resolver of disputes and interpreter of the law and defender of the constitution’ remains unchanged even in these times of great technological advancement. What must however change are the tools and resources deployed to tackling crimes”.Olajumoke whose speech dwelled on the conference theme: “Unbundling the criminal Justice Process in a Digital Economy, said although, the legal environment is traditionally conservative and wheels of justice always turn slowly, she assured that with articulate evidence, the prosecutor should be able to secure conviction in the case of e-fraud. On his part, Mrs Christable Onyejekwe, executive director of NIBSS represented by Mr. Osioke Ojior, chief risk officer, while speaking on, “The Financial, Economic and Social Cost of E-fraud to a Nation,” said that financial institutions in the country must step up their fights against electronic and other related financial fraud.According to the ED, some banks find it difficult to notice when they are breached, causing several billions of naira lost to fraudsters yearly.NIBSS revealed that banks have already lost over N4 billion from 916 attempted frauds and other financial players/MPO losing N32 million in 30 attempted attack volume, between January 1 and September 30, 2014.The losses were calculated attempted volume of N4.7 billion for banks and N72 million for OFI/MPO.Earlier in a welcome address, Mrs. Onajite Regha, chief executive officer of E-PPAN said that, compared to any other time in its history, the e-payment industry faces an overwhelming variety of security challenges as the transaction environment grows in size and complexity.Regha said that with more stakeholders, payment channels and the users driving the use of payment cards, the need to enhance the integrity of an increasingly dynamic system while ensuring global acceptance is more important than ever.The E-PPAN boss said, “On a global level, fraud continues to migrate from more secured to less secured regions and channels. This obvious shift is accelerated by an increasingly adept and organized criminal community that seeks to exploit security vulnerabilities and fraud. Criminals are targeting not just unmonitored, stand-alone, point-of-interaction devices, but also launching sophisticated attacks on the private networks of well-known entities, such as major data processors and top-tier merchants”.She warned that the aforementioned factors can lead to fraud attacks that cause erosion in confidence and global acceptance of e-payments.Regha added that, in a bid to forestall the trend, E-PPAN has decided to use the e-fraud conference as a platform to carry along identified and very important stakeholders in the fight against e-fraud.
Posted on: Tue, 04 Nov 2014 23:17:58 +0000
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