The government has blocked 140,000 mobile numbers so far that were involved in financial frauds. Dr. Vivek Joshi, secretary, Department of Financial Services, chaired a meeting on cyber security in the financial services sector in which various issues including onboarding of banks and financial institutions on the Citizen Financial Cyber Fraud Reporting and Management System (CFCFRMS) platform through application programming interfaces (API) integration were discussed.
During the meeting, it was noted that the Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has developed Artificial Intelligence and Facial Recognition-powered Solution for Telecom SIM Subscriber Verification (ASTR), an AI-machine learning-based engine, to detect mobile connections taken on fake/forged documents. As per the system, about 140,000 mobile handsets either linked to disconnected mobile connections or misused in cyber-crime or financial frauds have been blocked. DoT has analysed 3.5 million principal entities (PEs) sending bulk SMSs. Out of these, 19,776 PEs involved in sending malicious SMSs blacklisted and 30,700 SMS headers and 1,95,766 SMS templates have been disconnected.
Further, the integration of the CFCFRMS platform with the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal (NCRP) to centralise the platform that will enable effective collaboration between police, banks, and financial institutions, allowing for real-time monitoring and prevention of fraudulent activities was deliberated during the meeting.
