The Tribune

Cable Bahamas is “simplifying tasks” and “reducing compliance costs” as its moves to combat fraud in a period of accelerated “digital transformation” driven by COVID-19.

Franklyn Butler, the BISX-listed communications provider’s chief executive, told a webinar that both Hurricane Dorian and COVID-19 had shown that digital transformation was far more than just the mere ability to pay bills online

Speaking at an event held by the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE) Bahamas chapter and Citadel Consultants, he added: “How do we simplify our tasks? How do we really create an environment that is less paper-centric and really can reduce the compliance cost?

“It is about how do we really drive this idea of digital transformation and, for us, obviously with the pandemic and lockdowns, this whole idea of digital transformation became front and centre in our business in a way we never thought before. We thought digital transformation was allowing you to pay online and that was the be all and end all.”

With persons forced to work remotely, and operate online, risks associated with cyber fraud and identity theft, as well as online scams such as phishing and click fraud, have increased.

“I recently saw a statistic where I was driving down Shirley Street and it says 91 percent of cyber breaches start from an e-mail,” said Mr Butler.

Dwayne Davis, Cable Bahamas’ chief information officer, added: “Some things that we have done thus far, as an example, we’ve upgraded all of our routing, switching and firewalls. That is the gateway to our network, so what you do is you protect your home.

“The second thing we did was internally we also upgraded our VPN (Virtual Private Network), and went to a more robust connection to our gateway.”

Mr Davis said the “biggest problem” for cyber security “happens from within”, and that regardless of what security Cable Bahamas or any telecommunications provider puts into their network, human error will always find a way to thwart these efforts.

To ensure its system is as safe as it can be, Cable Bahamas tries to break into its own network and, often times, hires outside contractors to do this so that any vulnerabilities can be detected.

Mr Davis added: “As one of the premier communications providers in the country, I think any company that wants to get information, the bare minimum they should ask for is what is the security landscape and how informed are our employees.

“Secondly, they should look to utilise penetration testing and the other testing that we would have done internally. We have an internal audit committee that audits all of us, so basically we are auditing ourselves.

“Lastly, Cable Bahamas has something called Bahamas Cloud, which is our hosted data centre. So there are certain reports they will expect from the data centre providers that we will give them and, last but not least, we are always happy to work with any company auditors.”