For the starters if you look at the situation in banks, it is really very bad. A typical bank invests a lot of money into a strong room. The bank commits almost US$3billion to secure just US$1billion cash money; by building a hardened strong room to store bulk cash.
Insurance companies will usually restrict a bank to keep too much money in the strong room. The insurance company will dictate on the amount they can cover. Anything beyond that will bad for the bank. Typically, a given bank has over Ugx2billionin safe.
When banks set up the strong room, they will hire armed guards. The idea is to protect the physical cash in the strong room.
The other side is the bank security. When you meet any bank CEO their biggest challenge is automation. All core bank processes are now automated to provide client convenience. You are looking at the era of mobile banking, mobile money and internet banking as well as interlinkages with ATMs of other banks to ensure the bank can leverage so many solutions, services.
The biggest asset of any bank at any given point in time is their investment in technology specifically the core banking. Banks can upgrade their systems to make them more robust and mobile to enable convenience for clients. You find that the bank portfolio is in the core banking. Banks are handling so many transactions. Imagine just a single day this entire core banking goes down. How will this bank remain surviving? Of course the bank will say they are always doing a backup. But if you look at the cost of restoring the system and operations to normalise, it costs a lot of money.
This is why much as the banks are investing in strong rooms, they should equally spend a lot of money in IT security. Banks are spending less than US$100,000 in their ongoing cybersecurity readiness and spending a lot of money in strong rooms and armed guards for which the money is small.
To strengthen your security, it is important you match your risk and return. Put a lot of focus and attention where the biggest impact could be. Just a single day of bank system unavailability can cause a huge run on the bank. This possesses a big reputational and ongoing concern risk than if for example a strong room was breached.
