With the in­creased cy­ber­at­tacks in T&T, low con­sumer con­fi­dence in dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion could be ex­pe­ri­enced but there is still a need for ease of ac­cess and con­ve­nience.

That’s the be­lief of John Out­ridge, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of T&T In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre (TTIFC).

Out­ridge said that cy­ber­at­tacks are not a new phe­nom­e­non and as or­gan­i­sa­tions con­tin­ue to dri­ve traf­fic to their on­line plat­forms, pro­vid­ing the con­sumer with a sense of trust and se­cu­ri­ty will be the key to dri­ving us­age more than any oth­er strat­e­gy.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian on Thurs­day, Out­ridge said that at the con­sumer lev­el more def­i­nite­ly needs to be done in terms of dri­ving aware­ness, as­sur­ing con­sumers and mak­ing them more vig­i­lant about cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty is cru­cial in to­day’s dig­i­tal age.

Out­ridge said strate­gies and tips that can be help­ful in mit­i­gat­ing cy­ber­at­tacks:

• Pro­vide ed­u­ca­tion­al re­sources on ba­sic cy­ber­se­cu­ri­ty prac­tices. This can be in the form of ar­ti­cles, in­fo­graph­ics, or video tu­to­ri­als. Reg­u­lar­ly share tips and up­dates on emerg­ing threats through newslet­ters, so­cial me­dia, or your web­site.

• Em­pha­sise the im­por­tance of strong, unique pass­words for each ac­count.

• En­cour­age the use of pass­word man­agers to gen­er­ate and store com­plex pass­words se­cure­ly.

• Ed­u­cate users about com­mon phish­ing tac­tics and how to recog­nise phish­ing emails, mes­sages, or web­sites.

• Con­duct sim­u­lat­ed phish­ing ex­er­cis­es to test and im­prove users’ abil­i­ty to iden­ti­fy phish­ing at­tempts.

Reg­u­lar soft­ware up­dates–

• Re­mind con­sumers to keep their op­er­at­ing sys­tems, an­tivirus soft­ware, and ap­pli­ca­tions up to date to patch vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties.

Se­cure wifi prac­tices–

• In­struct users to se­cure their home wifi net­works with strong pass­words and en­cryp­tion.

• Avoid us­ing pub­lic wifi for sen­si­tive trans­ac­tions un­less a se­cure VPN is em­ployed.

Pri­va­cy set­tings–

• En­cour­age users to re­view and ad­just pri­va­cy set­tings on their de­vices and on­line ac­counts to con­trol the in­for­ma­tion they share.

• Ad­vise users to shop on­ly from rep­utable web­sites with se­cure pay­ment meth­ods.

• Use se­cure, en­crypt­ed con­nec­tions for on­line bank­ing trans­ac­tions.

De­vice se­cu­ri­ty–

• Em­pha­sise the im­por­tance of an­tivirus soft­ware and reg­u­lar mal­ware scans on de­vices.

• Re­mind users to en­able de­vice lock screens and bio­met­ric au­then­ti­ca­tion if avail­able.

• Stress the need for reg­u­lar back­ups of im­por­tant da­ta to pre­vent loss in case of ran­somware at­tacks or hard­ware fail­ures.

• Ex­plain­ing fur­ther as to how com­pa­nies can pro­tect them­selves from cy­ber­at­tacks.

Out­ridge said ac­cord­ing to the re­cent­ly pub­lished 2023 “Trends in Se­cur­ing Dig­i­tal Iden­ti­ties” re­port from the Iden­ti­ty De­fined Se­cu­ri­ty Al­liance (ID­SA), 90 per cent of or­gan­i­sa­tions ex­pe­ri­enced at least one iden­ti­ty-re­lat­ed breach in the past year, a 7.1 per cent in­crease year on year.

More­over, he not­ed that 68 per cent of the or­gan­i­sa­tions that in­curred an Iden­ti­ty-based breach over the past year suf­fered a di­rect busi­ness im­pact as a re­sult, the most sig­nif­i­cant of which is the cost as­so­ci­at­ed with re­cov­er­ing from the breach and these re­port find­ings paint a jar­ring pic­ture and its im­pact on or­gan­i­sa­tions.

Dur­ing Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert ‘s bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion in Oc­to­ber, he de­tailed a roadmap to Mi­cro, Small and Medi­um En­ter­pris­es (MSMEs).

Out­ridge said as part of the FI roadmap de­vel­op­ment, the TTIFC will be work­ing with stake­hold­ers such as the Cen­tral Bank, Fi­nan­cial In­tel­li­gence Unit (FIU), and oth­ers to en­gage with the pri­vate sec­tor to col­lab­o­rate with mer­chants and busi­ness­es to en­cour­age the adop­tion of dig­i­tal pay­ment sys­tems, pro­vid­ing in­cen­tives.

Al­so, he said to sup­port tran­si­tion­ing from cash-based trans­ac­tions to sup­port part­ner­ships with lo­cal fin­tech com­pa­nies and start-ups to lever­age in­no­v­a­tive so­lu­tions for fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion, such as dig­i­tal wal­lets and on­line so­lu­tions.

The TTIFC was tasked with com­plet­ing mul­ti­ple on­line pay­ment im­ple­men­ta­tion projects with­in the pub­lic sec­tor that are now avail­able for use by all cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es, both lo­cal­ly and abroad.

Out­ridge re­vealed that the ju­di­cia­ry fees and fines can now be paid via any of the 1,700 agents of the NL­CB across both T&T, sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duc­ing lines at the courts as well as pro­vid­ing ease and con­ve­nience for all cit­i­zens.

He not­ed that as of April this year, this ser­vice has processed over 11,000 trans­ac­tions, to­tal­ing just over $11 mil­lion in terms of rev­enue for the state re­ceived via this chan­nel.

Fur­ther, Out­ridge said the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion and the Min­istry of Trade and In­dus­try use the on­line pay­ment plat­forms for its cus­tomers and to fill out cer­ti­fi­ca­tions for ex­port.

“On­line pay­ment ser­vices that are await­ing launch be­fore the end of this year from agen­cies are the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port-Li­cens­ing Di­vi­sion and the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty, these im­ple­men­ta­tions will al­so see new cit­i­zen-fo­cused tech­nol­o­gy be­ing utilised such as self-ser­vice pay­ment kiosks to even fur­ther en­hance ser­vice de­liv­ery to cit­i­zens,” TTIFC CEO re­marked.

Asked how soon T&T can be­come a cash­less so­ci­ety Out­ridge point­ed out that be­com­ing a cash­less so­ci­ety is chal­leng­ing for any econ­o­my, even coun­tries such as the Unit­ed States.

He said a sur­vey con­duct­ed back in 2021 by the US Fed­er­al Re­serve es­ti­mat­ed cash us­age to be around 20 per cent for all trans­ac­tions con­duct­ed with­in the US econ­o­my.

“I don’t think there can ever be a hard time­line but rather a com­mit­ment to con­tin­u­ous­ly de­vel­op poli­cies and pro­grammes to make cash less at­trac­tive to use ver­sus oth­er dig­i­tal op­tions. What the TTIFC is aim­ing to do is to make at least T&T a “less cash” so­ci­ety,” he men­tioned.

Speak­ing on “One Fin­tech Av­enue” which was for­mal­ly launched back in Ju­ly by TTIFC, Out­ridge in­di­cat­ed that thus far, im­ple­men­ta­tion from the awardees of the Caribbean Fin­Tech Sprint for Fi­nan­cial In­clu­sion has be­gun.

Through this pro­gramme, he said Caribbean fin­tech en­ti­ties will be de­vel­op­ing so­lu­tions to ad­dress in­dus­try-wide is­sues im­ped­ing dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial in­clu­sion across the Caribbean and here at home in T&T.

“This ini­tia­tive at­tract­ed a to­tal of 53 par­tic­i­pants from var­i­ous coun­tries such as Sin­ga­pore, Brazil, Nor­way, Ghana, and Sri Lan­ka, while most pro­pos­als were from our own TT-based fin­tech en­ti­ties, sup­port­ing the de­vel­op­ment of in­clu­sive dig­i­tal fi­nan­cial ser­vices re­gion-wide,” Out­ridge con­clud­ed.