KARACHI (PRESS RELEASE)
BankIslami Pakistan Limited encountered a cyber-attack from unknown hackers on 27th October, 2018, to which the Bank responded immediately by shutting down all international transactions originating from International Payment Scheme and signing out from inter-operability switch.
Alhamdulillah, BankIslami had all its customer accounts protected. However, the transactions that landed (worth only Rs. 2.6 Million) were immediately credited into respective customer accounts.
Since the connection was disconnected between the international payment switch, the amount reported by International Payment Scheme via international transactions (worth 6.1 million dollars), was neither processed by Bank’s system nor deducted from any customer account.
In line with our commitment to serve our clients 24/7, we enabled our Biometric ATM Cash withdrawal service the very same day to cater to our customers’ cash needs.
Information security has always been BankIslami’s central focal point for all its services. BankIslami is the 1st Bank in Pakistan that launched state of the art and secured (thumb verification based) banking service, which includes 300+ biometric ATM network and all our branches in more than 114 cities across Pakistan.
Alhamdulillah, there is absolutely no threat as to continuing operations of BankIslami. However, as a precautionary measure, all transactions routing through the international payment scheme have been stopped and will be restored once the bank is confident that all risks of unauthorized international transactions have been mitigated.