State Bank of India Chairman CS Setty said the Indian Banks’ Association (IBA) is working on a platform for quicker sharing of information on cyber threats and data breaches among banks.

Admitting that cybersecurity is a “serious concern”, Setty said the digital attack surface area is increasing even as there is need for lenders to respond faster to such incidents and plug vulnerabilities.

Though lenders are currently sharing information with regulators and security agencies, a formal arrangement for intelligence sharing among banks would help take prompt preventive measures.

"Under the aegis of IBA, we are seriously working for a platform for information sharing among banks. This will help everybody to immediately take adequate measures in response to a particular attack," Setty, who is also the chairman of IBA, told reporters.

The IBA is working on ways to counter frontier artificial intelligence (AI) models-led attacks on the systems, Setty, who also heads a government-appointed panel tasked with ways of tackling risks from sophisticated frontier models like Anthropic's Mythos, said.

The proposed initiative comes amid rising cases of cyber threats as banks spread digital banking. These include attacks on SBI, Bank of Baroda and ICICI Bank. 

Even as banks tend to "use AI to counter AI threats", the IBA is looking to create a sandbox, in which all systems can be tested for vulnerabilities. New patches, if required, can be suggested, Setty said.

On the recent data breach incident at SBI, Setty said the root cause analysis was underway and would take time to complete. The bank’s immediate priority had been to contain the incident, identify the vulnerabilities that led to it and undertake remedial measures. We also undertook a complete cybersecurity drill," he added.

SBI’s probe on a suspected cyberattack involved 3,897 customer records containing personally identifiable information that was leaked on the dark web. The exposed information included customer names, mobile numbers, dates of birth, gender, email addresses, residential addresses, branch and customer identifiers and loan records.