This serves to notify our respectful readers that the Editorial Board of The Phnom Penh Post has retracted the following advertorial from publication: ‘Card records are available on darknet to purchase for the fraudsters’, published on 3 February, 2020, at 10:08 ICT.

While this advertorial was sponsored by a third party, we regretfully detected that certain pieces of information in the write-up in regards to cyber intrusion incidents at Cosmos Bank and NEPS were false.

The advertorial stated that the cyber incidents were caused by the vulnerability of SmartVista software owned by BPC Banking Technologies and that BPC Banking Technologies has not taken timely measures to fix the issues to protect customers.

The advertorial incited banks to deploy complementary solutions to protect themselves, implying that SmartVista software is not sufficiently secure.

The SmartVista software suite is a PA-DSS certified and PCI-DSS compliant solution built using the highest industry security standards, including the standard security architecture, framework, coding standards and features specified by regulatory bodies.

Both security incidents were timely resolved, the investigations having been led by cybercrime departments, federal investigation agencies and local forensic teams.

We hereby confirm that we have examined several reports of independent organisations dealing with cyber threats such as US-CERT and Kaspersky Lab.

These stated that the intrusion did not affect SmartVista software, although it did affect some of the concerned banks’ own operating systems.

The Phnom Penh Post expresses its regret to BPC Banking Technologies for the publication of this advertorial. Banks are always lucrative targets for cyber hackers and we should have been more meticulous in this case.

We wish to notify you that we have undertaken all necessary measures to retract the published advertorial according to the ethical standards of the banking and media community, and that all further collaboration with the sponsor of the advertorial is terminated.