Financial institutions in the country must take robust measures to safeguard against advanced artificial intelligence (AI) threats, according to a recent memorandum from the central bank.
The central bank warned that frontier AI systems can detect software vulnerabilities and perform multi-stage cyberattacks with minimal human intervention, posing significant risks to the financial system.
While access to these systems remains restricted, their emergence signals a shift toward increasingly adaptive and scalable cyberthreats, the central bank said.
Institutions are reminded that similar AI-enabled capabilities may eventually be leveraged by malicious actors to target financial systems, third-party service providers, and critical infrastructure.
To address these growing risks, the central bank recommended that institutions reinforce their cybersecurity and technology risk management frameworks, implementing sound practices for asset management, vulnerability management, and security monitoring.
Regulators have raised concerns over AI models like Anthropic's Mythos, which could pose significant challenges to the banking industry and its legacy technology systems, given its ability to code at a high level and identify cybersecurity vulnerabilities.
Among the measures recommended by the central bank include having better visibility of their attack surfaces and integrating AI-enabled defensive tools for real-time threat detection and automated patching.
The central bank also urged institutions to adopt micro-segmentation, implement zero trust architectures, and shift to multi-factor authentication using hardware security keys, smart cards, or hardware-backed certificate-based verification to counter AI-enabled social engineering.
Social engineering schemes, including phishing scams and account takeover, remain the top cyberthreat to the country's digital payments system, accounting for 76% of financial fraud losses in the first half of 2025.
The central bank emphasized the importance of reassessing and improving Business Continuity Management frameworks and Business Continuity Plans, as well as formally developing AI Governance Frameworks in accordance with established principles.
The central bank's memorandum outlines guidelines for local financial institutions' ethical AI adoption, governed by principles of sustainability, transparency, accountability, responsibility, and security.
