Bank of The Bahamas (BOB) will replace at least 2,000 credit cards as a defensive measure after a data tape was stolen from an office in Barbados. Paul McWeeney, the managing director at BOB, confirmed that the financial institution received "late notice" that some of its cards may have been compromised. While there have been no formal reports of fraud, banking leaders in The Bahamas and across the region are very much in a wait and see mode.
As exclusively revealed by Guardian Business last week, thieves appear to have infiltrated an international acquiring company. Sensitive information for clients across the region could have spilled into the hands of criminals. Commonwealth Bank Limited confirmed that it could reissue as many as 5,000 replacement cards, while Fidelity Bank immediately pulled the trigger on a complete card reissuing over a week ago. "We will place 2,000 cards. These kinds of incidents are totally beyond our control," McWeeney said yesterday.
"We rely on other processes to ensure the safety of our information. We will inquire on what precautionary steps were taken by the processors to ensure the information is safeguarded." The probe by BOB shines a new spotlight on how these international acquiring companies conduct business while holding significant information of consumers in other countries. "We want to know what precautions will be introduced to prevent this from happening again," the managing director added.
BOB was forced to boost its staff over the weekend to cope with the customer service demands of explaining the situation and reissuing cards. McWeeney said cyber crime is a relatively new issue for Bahamians and it will continue to rear its ugly head in the future. This manner of crime is a way to attract huge volumes of information in a relative short period of time. The managing director said that the industry must respond "prudently and appropriately".
Serfent Rolle, an associate at Seymour & Co, told Guardian Business there are very few regulations in The Bahamas governing data collection, storage and processing. Rolle, who holds a Master's degree in information communication technology law, felt The Bahamas needs to move towards a more regulated environment in the handling and processing of data at home and abroad.
"That is not to say anyone is to blame in this scenario. Breaches will continue to occur," he said. "But regulation is necessary to have certain procedures in place, whether it's technology, proper firewalls, whether it is hard data in terms of copies and making sure they are secure, and people who have access to them have the proper credentials."
In other words, this latest data breach could reopen the topic of whether The Bahamas is exposed to best practices in data storage and processing for major financial institutions. "It's something people need to find about in this global village," he told Guardian Business. "You may walk into any bank and give your personal data to a friendly face, but once you put it in the computer and hit send, who is storing or using that? We need to keep up with the criminals."
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