ICICI bank issues dos and don’ts after security breach

By Raaghav G R

Posted on October 22, 2016

In the wake of a massive security breach of ATM cards, in which the card holders’ sensitive account information was at risk, ICICI Bank has come up with a list of precautionary measures for its customers. The bank said that it had changed the ATM PINs of those customers who were perceived as potentially affected by the security breach. “We would like to assure you that ICICI Bank has already taken precautionary measures to change the ATM PIN of customers who were identified to be at potential risk”, the bank’s spokesperson said. “If you have not received any communication from ICICI Bank to change your ATM PIN, you can be sure that your debit card is not at risk”, he added.

The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) said the data compromise involved 641 customers of nineteen Indian banks, resulting in fraudulent withdrawals of Rs. 1.30 crores. “All affected banks have been alerted by all card networks that a total card base of about 3.2 million could have been possibly compromised. Out of this 0.6 million are RuPay cards,” it said in the statement. ICICI bank, one of the primary banks in the private sector of India, explained how the breach was detected. “The genesis of problem was receipt of complaints from few banks that their customer’s cards were used fraudulently mainly in China and USA while customers were in India. Apprehending that this could be a case of card data compromise, all the ATMs, PoS terminals in India and three card networks namely RuPay, Visa and MasterCard worked in a collaborative manner in the month of October 2016”, the bank’s spokesperson said.

Here is the list of dos and don’ts issued by ICICI bank to its customers:

• Do change your ATM PIN once every three to six months.
• Do not share your ATM PIN with anyone.
• Report lost or stolen cards immediately.
• NEVER SHARE your Card number, CVV, PIN, OTP, Expiry date or URN with anyone, even if the person claims to be a bank employee. Sharing these details can lead to unauthorized access to your account.
• Never keep your Card and PIN together or write your PIN on the card.
• Transact online only at reputed and known online merchants.

India is a booming and populous country where we have a booming and wealthy middle class population. Criminals in the USA, Europe and China have always attempted to exploit this wealth by hacking into the networks of banks and ATMs. However, most of their attempts have been thwarted so far with no major misuse of customers’ finance or financial information. The recent security breach of ATM cards is yet another attempt by criminals from those countries to exploit the wealth of the working class in India. It is heartening to see that three card networks namely RuPay, Visa and MasterCard came together and worked in a collaborative manner to secure their customers’ sensitive account information. If they had not done so, the financial theft would have been far greater with much more that Rs. 1.3 crores stolen from 3.2 million customers in India. I too had received messages from ICICI bank requesting to change my PIN due to security reasons and am now, grateful to them for securing my account. This incident goes to show how team work and understanding can achieve great results. The suspects behind this security breach are two Romanians and one American who have been arrested. Read more on Startups

ICICI bank issues dos and don’ts after security breach