Egypt opens cybersecurity hub for banking systems

The Egyptian Central Bank (CBE) said Monday that it had set up a new cybersecurity centre to defend banking institutions from cyber-attacks.

Sherif Hazem, the CBE’s vice governor for cybersecurity, told reporters that “safeguarding the data of the banking sector was unavoidable.” On the margins of the FinTech Conference, he made his remarks.

“The centre installs a sensor inside banks to detect malicious attacks and alert banking institutions before they occur,” Hazem noted, adding that cybersecurity was now “one of the determinants of national security.”

70 percent of national financial transactions are now done “digitally,” according to the source.