Kazakhstan begins laying financial sector cybersecurity foundation

Participants in the Kazakhstani financial system are faced with new technological challenges that they are unable to adequately face alone. However, the industry is struggling to confront them as a whole, putting individual interests ahead of the interests of the whole system. This has led to a situation where digital incidents go largely unreported and are considered to be an internal affair for each participant. To help address this, the ‘Cybersecurity of the Financial Sector of Kazakhstan’ forum was held in Almaty. Specifically, the forum was meant as a place to bring together participants in Kazakhstan’s financial market with state authorities to discuss the need for introducing security standards that will ensure the stability of the whole system in the country. Participants at the forum also discussed legal issues that make dealing with cyber threats and attacks problematic, especially that law enforcement agencies and courts are currently ill-equipped to work with digital evidence or to “translate” existing legislation to digital environments.

The country has begun to make some efforts to remedy the situation however, with the National Bank becoming the industry center of the financial market in terms of cybersecurity. Moreover, the procedures and deadlines for submitting information on incidents to the National Information Security Coordination Center have already been determined. This Center will not only coordinate necessary actions in the event of an incident, it will also carry out threat analyses.

Source: kapital.kz