The State Bank of Vietnam (SBV) in collaboration with the South East Asian Central Banks (SEACEN) Research and Training Centre and the Bank of Japan (BoJ) have recently held a training course themed "IT risks, including cyber security risks in the banking sector ".
The course attracted the participation of 32 trainees who are middle and senior officials of 12 central banks and SEACEN member monetary management agencies. The speakers and lecturers in the training course were experts from SEACEN, the public sector (BoJ, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), the Central Bank of the Republic of the Philippines) and the private sector (Ernst & Young, DTCC Company, DCS Company, MyCERT Company, AIG Group). On Vietnam’s side, there were 9 officials from the SBV (the Information Technology Department, the Banking Supervision Agency, the Central Banking Department, the Payment Department and the Internal Audit Department) together with a representative from the Banking Academy and a representative from Vietnam National Payment Joint Stock Company (NAPAS).
The content of the training course focused on (i) risks in information technology that financial institutions have been facing, (ii) the concepts and mechanism of the IT risk assessment activities, (iii) the impacts of fintech disruption, and (iv) cyber threats and cyber security. This training program was developed by SEACEN, aiming to equip the trainees with risk classification skills as well as create opportunities for those who are working at the relevant entities to discuss about the technology risks at banks and other financial institutions.
In his opening speech, Mr. To Huy Vu, Director General of the SBV International Cooperation Department, emphasized that IT is nowadays applied more and more deeply in the socio-economic life. This has brought many benefits to the financial activities in general, as well as improved the quality of banking products and services in particular. However, along with the benefits, IT also poses many risks and challenges for users, commercial banks and management units. Therefore, the central banks have played an important role in finding solutions to address the issues, not only strengthening the supervisory quality of the authorities but also ensuring the prudence of the system and the users’ interests. According to Mr. To Huy Vu's sharings, SEACEN is one of the few international training institutions to implement training programs on IT risks. With the prestige of SEACEN, he hoped that this training course would create a premise and contribute to providing orientations to the IT safety in general and cyber security in the banking sector in particular.
On the sidelines of the training course, on the afternoon of August 26, 2019, at the headquarters of the SBV, Deputy Governor Dao Minh Tu had a meeting with Dr. Mangal Goswami, SEACEN Executive Director, on the occasion of his participation in the training course on “IT risks, including cyber security risks in the banking sector”. This was his first business trip to Vietnam as SEACEN Executive Director after he took this position from August 1, 2019.
Le Hang