With the increasing number of cyber frauds in the country, the Reserve Bank of India, National Stock Exchange and various other apex financial bodies have regularly taken up awareness programs to reduce the number of scam cases. Zerodha co-founder Nitin Kamath believes that there is one precaution that can significantly reduce your chances of becoming a victim of cyber fraud. It’s 2FA! According to Kamath, 2FA stands for two-factor authentication. He said that 2FA should be enabled everywhere.
What is 2FA?
With the advancement in technology, hackers can easily steal passwords while logging into any application or website. However, 2FA is an additional factor in securing your account. Biometric authorization, TOTP (time-based expiration code), etc. make it very difficult to compromise an account, says Kamath.
In the world of artificial intelligence, everyone has become a target of hackers, especially businesses as hacks can be financially profitable. Sharing tips for businesses to avoid financial scams, Kamath said that involving real technologists who understand UX and user behavior can be a good step to mitigate the risks.
Kamath shared his personal experiences while applying at Zerodha.
How does Zerodha ensure the safety of employees from cyber attacks?
Nitin Kamath said that at Zerodha they have mandated 2FA for internal employee systems as well. Also, strict ‘role-based access’ in which everyone has least access and least privilege by default.
By default nothing is connected to the internet and access is on “zero trust” networks. Even incoming external e-mail for employees is only available where necessary. Zerodha has botnet and DDoS protection in front of all internet-facing systems. Real time monitoring and analysis system.
Furthermore, the entire employee base, including non-technical people, uses Linux desktops to reduce the attack surface. Kamath said he uses Zorin (Linux). He said he is skeptical about outside vendors and SaaS services. Kamath wrote on Twitter, “We self-host all of our internal systems on private networks and have almost no SAAS vendors. Everything is largely self-hosted FOSS (free and open source).”
Is Zero Cyber Risk Possible?
According to the Zerodha founder, there is no way to ensure that there is zero cyber risk and it is not purely a technical issue. Human weaknesses are exploited in a huge number of hacks in the world.
But constant vigilance, good technology, nontechnical practices and procedures, and an awareness of the risks can reduce at least some fraud.
Kamath concluded, “In a world of NFTs, crypto, AI, the metaverse, etc., we need to be almost paranoid about all digital interactions. At the same time, always remember that if something seems too good to be true , then it is usually true.” ,
A report titled “The Anatomy of Fraud 2023” by AI-Architect Platform Bureau recently revealed that about 65% of all fraud cases in the financial services sector are related to account-related fraud. And, reported about 55% of cases digital payment Frauds in India are related to UPI.
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Updated: July 15, 2023, 08:54 AM IST