PATNA, Sept. 23 -- The Department of Telecommunications (DoT) has directed all cooperative banks in Bihar and Jharkhand, including the Bihar Rajya Sahakari Bhumi Vikas Bank Samiti, to integrate its Financial Risk Indicator (FRI) into their systems to strengthen cyber fraud prevention, said a senior telecom officer on Monday. "In a letter dated September 16, the DoT has asked state, district-central and urban cooperative banks to link their systems with its Digital Intelligence Platform (DIP) and adopt real-time response protocols such as alerts, transactional delays, blocking or declining suspicious transactions," said Surya Prakash, deputy director general (security), DoT, Bihar. The FRI, introduced in May, is a dynamic risk classification system that flags mobile numbers as medium, high or very high risk based on fraud-related inputs from the National Cybercrime Reporting Portal, the Chakshu platform, and intelligence from financial institutions. It aims to empower banks with actionable intelligence to stop fraud before transactions go through. The DoT, as part of its responsibility to secure the digital ecosystem in India, introduced the FRI, which was to alert a mobile subscriber that sending money through UPI or any form of online transaction to such numbers could be lost, said Prakash. The DoT has already introduced the FRI, which alerts mobile subscribers by showing suspected fraud alerts and generating alerts of suspected fraudulent transactions....