Westpac bank building. [File Photo]

In the last 12 months, Westpac Fiji responded to 873 phishing sites impersonating as Westpac Group sites.

Westpac Fiji Chief Executive, Shane Smith says some of them have impersonated Westpac Internet Banking site.

Smith revealed this during their submission on the Convention on Cybercrime before the Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs and Defense today.

He says when this gets picked up, their Information Security Group team based in Australia closes the site.

Smith says in their last case, a customer’s credentials were compromised, however, this is now being mitigated by second-factor authentication, especially for financial transactions.

“So you can’t actually push a financial transaction through unless you get a second-factor code and in some cases for businesses we also have dual authorization so you need two people to actually authorize a financial transaction.”

Smith says Westpac has a layered set of cyber security controls in place.

“We have a number of controls to actually mitigate against cyber. We have secured networks, identity and access management, security monitoring, data protection, infrastructure security and application security.”

Smith adds being part of a broader organization Westpac in Fiji and Papua New Guinea have a lot of the expertise available in Australia.