Explain the key components of a Cyber Crisis Management Plan and outline its significance in mitigating cyber risks for financial institutions.

A Cyber Crisis Management Plan (CCMP) should be immediately evolved and should be a part of the overall Board approved strategy. Considering the fact that cyber-risk is different from many other risks, the traditional BCP/DR arrangements may not be adequate and hence needs to be revisited keeping in view the nuances of the cyber-risk. In India, CERT-IN (Computer Emergency Response Team - India, a Government entity) has been taking important initiatives in strengthening cyber-security by providing proactive & reactive services as well as guidelines, threat intelligence and assessment of preparedness of various agencies across the sectors, including the financial sector. CERTIN also have come out with National Cyber Crisis Management Plan and Cyber Security Assessment Framework. CERT-In/NCIIPC/RBI/IDRBT guidance may be referred to while formulating the CCMP. CCMP should address the following four aspects: (i) Detection (ii) Response (iii) Recovery and (iv) Containment. Banks and Financial Institutions need to take effective measures to prevent cyber-attacks and to promptly detect any cyber-intrusions so as to respond / recover / contain the fall out. Banks are expected to be well prepared to face emerging cyber-threats such as 'zero-day' attacks, remote access threats, and targeted attacks. Among other things, banks should take necessary preventive and corrective measures in addressing various types of cyber threats including, but not limited to, denial of Service, Distributed Denial of Services (DDoS), ransom-ware / crypto ware, destructive malware, business email frauds including spam, email phishing, spear phishing, whaling, vishing frauds, drive-by downloads, browser gateway fraud, ghost administrator exploits, identity frauds, memory update frauds, password related frauds, etc.