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NetGuardians CEO Joel Winteregg said the firm provides an intelligent behavioural alerting solution which continuously monitors and analyses banking activities and transactions/FILE

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Swiss firm comes to ‘guard’ Kenyan banks

NetGuardians CEO Joel Winteregg said the firm provides an intelligent behavioural alerting solution which continuously monitors and analyses banking activities and transactions/FILE

NetGuardians CEO Joel Winteregg said the firm provides an intelligent behavioural alerting solution which continuously monitors and analyses banking activities and transactions/FILE

NAIROBI, Kenya, Nov 28 – A Swiss-based software firm NetGuardians plans to fully venture into the Kenyan market by partnering with local banks to fight the increasing cases of fraud within the institutions.

NetGuardians CEO Joel Winteregg said the firm provides an intelligent behavioural alerting solution which continuously monitors and analyses banking activities and transactions.

The firm uses a tool called NG|Screener which filters the bank’s data and sends out alerts whenever potential risks are spotted.

NG|Screener also integrates seamlessly into all major core banking platforms.

“The issue of fraud is mainly around user behaviour and mostly within the institutions. For example when you watch people doing some transaction from the same computer that should be a reason to raise an alert, just to focus on them,” Winteregg said.

“With these alerts and regular reporting, the bank is protected from fraud and data theft,” he added.

So far two banks in Kenya – Commercial Bank of Africa and NIC bank – have already adopted the solution, since the firm came to the Kenyan market six months ago.

NetGuardians has partnered with an international provider of IT solutions for banks, SOFGEN Holdings and global audit firm PricewaterhouseCoopers to mitigate malpractice.

PricewaterhouseCoopers Assurance Manager Benjamin Mkwizu lamented that banks were losing billions of shillings but only a third of the incidences are reported hence being hard to quantify the exact loses.

“The reason why most of the banks won’t be forthcoming is for the obvious reason; the image of the bank, from a perception that you don’t have sufficient security. I know the trend is all over the world, but the focus should be what we can do,” Mkwizu said.

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“Operational risk management is very important. As the banks continue to leverage on technology to control costs, it is also important to focus more on how to minimize fraud,” SOFGEN CEO Tunde Oladele noted.

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