Acknowledging challenges faced by banks in cyber era, a top RBI official has said the banks should ensure their transactions be hassle-free and customer-friendly so as to retain loyalty of the end-users.

"For example, multi-layer security by way of log-in password, transaction password and confidential data confirmation make online transactions more secure. But, there are issues like memorising multiple passwords, slogans, pictures, answers to questions etc and some transaction of urgent nature getting struck due to these problems, or even online access getting blocked some times,” said RBI's Executive Director G Padmanabhan at the Annual Conference on Secure Banking 2011 organised by the Indian Banking Association (IBA) recently.


This, coupled with the time taken for access re-activation, password generation etc, which is sometimes a lengthy time taking process, causes irritation and inconvenience to the customer," he added.

He said managing security was more challenging in online and phone banking as compared to other delivery channels. Threats to ATMs also take the form of ATM skimming, eavesdropping, spoofing and service denial, he observed citing threats like password hacking, card cloning to data and identity theft at various levels of transaction, Padmanabhan added.