a market - run economy in its harshest form. a responsible state, however, takes precautionary measures. it anticipates movements and acts as a buffer in the most extreme cases. this role is now being played by the national bank. but what can the national bank responsibly commit to achieve in these turbulent times? let me point out the main areas : 1. preserving stability of prices in the current economic environment – in all its activities, the national bank is committed to „ achieving and maintaining price stability ”. achievement of its commitment determines the general economic environment and the standard of living of our citizens. let me emphasize again : the real increase in wages once the exact nominal increase is specified, depends exclusively on consumer price growth, i. e. inflation. any real growth in wages in the course of this year will be determined by the effectiveness of the government and the national bank in terms of keeping inflation under control. 2. adoption of ( additional ) measures to prevent or moderate the effects of disruptions in the banking system and / or financial market – a set of measures posted on the nbs website have already become operational, from measures to moderate the effects of changes in the exchange rate on debtor categorization, to measures aiming to create conditions to improve foreign liquidity of banks and enable access to cheaper sources of funding from abroad. naturally, in time, this list will grow longer as movements in our economy and experiences of countries in the region and wider may command. 3. ensuring unobstructed functioning of the foreign exchange market – serbia ’ s international reserves have risen quite substantially during the earlier period of high foreign exchange inflow. in addition, the national bank has been engaged in the repurchase of foreign currency cash from exchange dealers, and in 2006 alone such repurchase came to as much as eur 1, 730 million, in 2007 to eur 1, 158 and in 2008 to eur 507 million. such activity, plus setting high reserve requirements and implementing prudential measures in the area of supervision have managed to preempt stronger appreciation of the national currency. namely, strengthening of the national currency is a normal byproduct during the period of abundant foreign currency inflow from privatization and increased borrowing abroad. yesterday we sold eur 43. 5 million in the fixing session, while the overall volume of trading among commercial banks reached eur 17. 5 million only. so, the nbs is doing its job and

individual is authorized to initiate a payment. new approaches to authentication increasingly offer greater assurance and protection. given the current technologies that we have at our disposal, we should assess the continued use of signatures as a means of authenticating card transactions. it is important to layer security tools and procedures. methods to devalue payment data, like tokenization and encryption for data at rest, in use, and in transit, mitigate the effect of a data breach. analytics can identify and prevent fraudulent transactions. firewalls and segmentation of technology supporting critical functions can protect networks from outside attacks. also, remember that people inside your organization and organizations that you work with can pose a significant risk. one study found that more than 20 percent of security incidents could be attributed to insiders. 4 segregation of duties, background checks, and monitoring for anomalies help reduce the risk of insider threats. strong vendor - management programs can reduce risks from an institution ’ s partners and service providers. 3. planning as crucial as they are, we should keep in mind that these prevention tools cannot stand alone. even with stronger authentication methods, robust network security, and other approaches in place, preventive measures aren ’ t sufficient to manage security risks. such measures are designed to protect against known risks. but those looking to exploit the system will continue to devise new methods of attack. in some of the recent high - profile data breaches, companies have scrambled to deal with the aftermath. this brings me to my third point. we need a comprehensive way to think about planning. the national institute of standards and technology ’ s cybersecurity framework is one of many voluntary cybersecurity frameworks that provide a holistic, risk - based approach to planning. 5 in addition to preventive measures, the framework identifies four additional core functions : identify, detect, respond, and recover. we can apply these four functions to securing the payment system. an important first step is to identify internal business processes and assets, as well as external threats. you can ’ t protect yourself unless you understand how your business is structured. this sounds simple enough, but an organization ’ s computer systems are often unexpectedly interconnected. some of the largest point - of - sale data breaches, for example, originate outside payment card systems. 6 you should also keep up to date on cyber developments and gather information about threats from information sharing forums, including fs - isac, us - cert, and the fbi ’ s infra