Hackers sneak into National Bank, walk away with 29 million

The bank has denied that customers’ accounts are affected. [Courtesy]

National Bank of Kenya has admitted losing Sh29 million in a fraud attack at the institution on Wednesday, January 17, 2018.

The bank would however, wait for 48 hours after the attack to issue a statement on the loss, maintaining that customers’ accounts had not been affected.

“We confirm that there was an attempted fraud in normal course of business on January 17, but the Bank’s monitoring and security resources frustrated the attempt,” the statement read.

It further dismissed as false the social media speculation on the potential loss in what the institution called ‘attempted fraud’.

“The amount of attempted fraud is about Sh29 million and we are confident we will recover most of that money,” the bank added.

Financial institutions in Kenya have recently become a soft target for cyber criminals, losing Sh30 billion within two years.

Police records show that the institutions lost Sh17 billion to the fraudsters in 2016, up from Sh14 billion in 2015.

A report published by the Communication Authority and Kenya National Bureau of Statistics (KNBS) in 2017 showed only a mere 36.5 per cent of enterprises has an ICT security policy.  

In a move to cripple the morphing menace, Central Bank of Kenya (CBK) directed banks to furnish it with a cyber-security policy by the end of August 2017.