The USAID/World Council of Credit Unions’ (WOCCU) Credit for Agriculture Producers’ (CAP) Project in July trained IT professionals from 13 Ukrainian credit unions and two credit union associations on cybersecurity requirements that are likely to be designed and implemented in 2024 by the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), the country’s credit union regulator.

The two-day online training session included lessons on the international standards for cybersecurity and their methods of implementation, with participants:

• receiving educational materials and samples of internal policies on cybersecurity, which they can use to develop appropriate documentation in their own organizations.
• acquiring knowledge and materials to help their credit unions or associations improve existing practices and develop new processes related to cybersecurity.
• learning how to bring the level of the information security management system in their organizations into compliance with the basic requirements of international standards.
• discovering how to improve the overall level of information and cybersecurity in their organizations.

The goal is to help the Ukrainian credit union sector meet international cybersecurity standards that are designed to better protect a member’s personal data and to serve them in a safer manner.

The training comes just a few months after the NBU conducted a survey among credit unions and other non-bank financial institutions (NBFIs) on their level of cybersecurity readiness. The NBU plans to use the results of that survey to develop regulations that will allow credit unions to implement cybersecurity requirements that are in line with the international standards.

This is a critically important step, as credit unions in Ukraine become more digitalized and move toward the adoption of new online lending platforms.