Exhibitions India Group and Fintech India expo hosted the latest webinar in the ongoing series, as industry experts discussed methods of ‘Securing Digital Payments in the Age of Emerging Technologies.’
Moderator Mr. Amol Bhat, Partner, PwC hosted an insightful discourse, deliberating the future of digital payments and the state of cybersecurity. “Except for March and most of April, there has not been much of a difference in digital payments. Mobile payment, tokenised and card payment modules are all available in India, and new technologies such as blockchain are being explored in fintech. UPI is one of the most robust and secure systems of digital payments created. Another emerging trend is 3x3/3x4 dimensional ecosystems, which will allow 16, 20 or 28 combinations for security.”
Highlighting the importance of IT working as secret warriors during COVID-19, Mr. Bharat Panchal, Chief Risk Officer, India, Middle East and Africa, FIS remarked, “TPS (transactions/second) have risen sharply with about 1.3 billion transactions just last month, and banks have worked tirelessly to ensure seamless payments. Pre-COVID days had banks with less than 2-3% staff working remotely, but the paradigm shifted completely with lockdowns in place, which has tested the elasticity of our infrastructure. Technology has a huge responsibility to ensure transfer systems for datacentres to the work from home model.”
Elaborating on the evolution of insurance industry during the pandemic, Mr. Dipu K V, President – Operation, Communities & CX, Bajaj Allianz General Insurance Co. Ltd. explained, “With the work from home model coming into effect, we came up with employee engagement programs, with the added advantage in these times of virtual of participation of employees and their families. On the customer side, as all call centres shut down during initial lockdowns, all systems had to go online right away. The shift to digital has actually gone well, with a whopping 90% drop in customer grievances during this period.”
Mr. Vineet Tyagi, CTO, Biz2Credit discussed the impact of COVID-19 on workforces, “The effect on workforce dynamic was overnight. From an IT perspective, we had to move everything to the cloud to enable work from home. Employee safety was another factor that had to be looked out for, and we facilitated if any employees wanted to go back to their hometowns. One of the biggest changes was employee engagement that HR stepped in to recreate for remote working. Another major issue was the flexibility of processes, and overnight IT teams recreated systems that would have otherwise taken months. Our focus is to ensure that system agility remains in order for business to continue running smoothly.”
Mr. Nitin Bhatnagar, Associate Director – India, PCI Security Standards Council made a case for evolving data security standards. “An industry report yesterday indicated a 46% rise in India’s digital payments since last year at 45.72 billion transactions. We are constantly figuring out how to ensure secure infrastructure to enable digital payments in India. A strong data protection system is one that continuously monitors the processes and transactions. Cybercrime today is a business, and looking for new opportunities to attack systems. At PCI, we are working towards developing new security standards in order to secure upcoming technologies. We are working with 3D secure to protect both e-commerce and m-commerce services.”
Mr. Rahul Tyagi, Co-Founder, Lucideus talked about the challenges faced by organisations with the work from home model, “From pre-pandemic days to now, we have seen some 70-80% organisations shift their focus from protecting technology to the human-chain which is the largest risk to systems. The traditional problem with cybersecurity has been that this risk could not be quantified. Our product has made this possible, and organisations can now quantify the exact risk posed by evaluating the vulnerability of employees. For the first time ever, internal technologies have prolonged exposure to the internet, making them prone to attacks. Awareness and knowledge of cybersecurity measures is certainly the first time in thwarting attacks.”
