MUMBAI: More than 200 cooperative and regional rural banks are experiencing outages because of a ransomware attack. Following the attack, the National Payments Corporation of India disconnected their core banking provider C-Edge Technologies – a technology company promoted by SBI and TCS – from the payment system.
In a statement issued here, NPCI said, “C-Edge Technologies, a technology service provider who caters mostly to cooperative and regional rural banks, has been possibly impacted by a ransomware attack impacting few of their systems. To prevent larger impact to the payments ecosystem, NPCI has temporarily isolated C-Edge Technology from accessing the retail payment system operated by NPCI. Customers of banks serviced by C-Edge will not be able to access payment systems during the period of isolation,” the statement said.
NPCI added that restoration work is underway on a war footing and security review is in process and connectivity to the affected banks will be restored at the earliest. C-Edge is understood to have appointed an auditor to submit a forensic report.
C-Edge Technologies provides a comprehensive core banking service using an outsourced application service provider model for small banks that cannot afford to purchase a core banking solution. This service helps banks connect all their branches, allowing them to manage and control everything from a single system. Sources said that most of the regional rural banks serviced by C-Edge are subsidiaries of SBI and other public sector banks.
According to sources, despite the large number of banks serviced the share of these banks in electronic transactions was less than 0.5% as most lenders were small rural banks.
