LEADER of Opposition Business in the Upper House and investment banker Senator Peter Bunting says financial services regulators must find a way to insulate institutions and customers affected by cyber fraud from the “embarrassment” which normally follows.

Bunting, who was making his contribution to the debate on the Report of the Joint Select Committee on the 2015 Cybercrimes Act, in the Senate on Friday, said the rise in incidents of cyber fraud at institutions and in relation to individual account holders is a haunting reality.

The Opposition senator, in further noting a recommendation in the report for an obligation to be placed on financial institutions to report cases of fraud to the Bank of Jamaica or the FSC (Financial Services Commission), so that the systemic risk can be monitored and assessed by the regulators, said this might have to be taken a step further.

“We may see it as on the margins today, and it’s not so marginal any more. Banks in the old days would prefer to absorb the losses rather than suffer the reputational risks, rather than the public at large knowing that they or their customers have been hit multiple times. But I think we have to move beyond that, find a way, perhaps, to cauterise the individual risk to the banks or embarrassment to banks or customers,” he suggested.

According to Bunting, “The regulators must have a handle on the scale of this issue so that they can ensure [that] whatever mitigating measures need to be taken, are taken before the risk rises to the level of threatening the system or even threatening individual institutions.

“The report is the first step but I think anyone reading the report will realise that it is really just a beginning. There is a lot of technical work that will now have to be done to see how we can continue to adapt, not just our laws but our monitoring and regulatory capabilities to keep abreast of the rapidly changing cyber environment and the potential risks it imposes at the same time, as we know the potential for good is also enormous. It is one of those two-edged swords,” Bunting added.

Friday, Government Senator Dr Saphire Longmore said the negatives which accompany the increasing use of technology in the virtual space pose a real threat to the vulnerable, in particular.

“I have seen where persons have a security camera in their child’s playroom or bedroom and all of a sudden the camera comes on and someone in a foreign land, many, many oceans away and is actually viewing that camera installed inside the privacy of a home,” Longmore pointed out.

“The other real situation we are we are dealing with that impacts on so many levels is the online gaming that a lot of our children engage in, and we are seeing in our space a kind of emotional reaction to it where children are becoming angry, they are seeking to replicate some of what they are playing in the games, not appreciating the difference between reality and the virtual space,” she noted.

Longmore, in expressing concern about the lurking dangers, suggested that a cadre of individuals be trained via the HEART/NSTA Trust to provide, among other things, public education tutorials for parents, teaching them how to manage and monitor devices in order to protect their children in the virtual space.

On Friday, minister without portfolio in the Office of the Prime Minister with oversight for skills and digital transformation, Dr Dana Morris Dixon, in closing the debate, said Bunting’s concern regarding the reporting responsibility of financial institutions is one that will be advocated for.

“From the discussions, we have seen that cybercrimes are real and they have a human impact. And I think the thing for me that was so very powerful, in looking at the report and the crimes that have been reported, a lot of our women have reported crimes about revenge porn, and I think in seeing evidence of at least one conviction it says to our women: ‘You don’t have to suffer in this manner.’ And it also says to our men that, ‘You can be charged for doing things like this,’ and it has such danger and harm. And I am very pleased that we can have legislation like this,” she said.

In noting that the original 2015 legislation was well-crafted and had stood the test of time Morris Dixon said, “the next thing is to make these amendments and take it through that process and start the work of developing the Cyber Security Act”.