Philippines plans to tighten regulations for bitcoin operators and exchanges to bolster cyber security systems of banks and financial institutions.

According to South China Morning Post, many banks around the world have fallen victim to cyber attacks that involved the use of fraudulent SWIFT messages. In a lecture organized by the bank, Nestor Espenilla, central bank deputy governor in charge of banking supervision, said that to curb such attacks, the Philippine central bank has set up a cyber security surveillance division to monitor cyber threats, conduct surveillance work and manage cyber security issues.

“We have a core IT supervision group ... and within that group we created a new division that is focused on cyber security issues to strengthen our capacity to deal with these,” he said in his statement. He also mentioned that the special security team will investigate bitcoin operators to discourage money laundering.

Bitcoin startups in the Philippines such as coins.ph and rebit.ph which partnered last year with ZipZap, have become popular over the past two years. Espenilla said that bitcoin users have more than doubled in the first half of last year.

“That is what we are looking to do, whether it is now time to impose hard regulations for virtual currency operators. Right now, we look at them as akin to remittance companies,” Espenilla said.

According to a press release, the Central Bank of Philippines in 2014 issued a warning explaining the risks of using bitcoin and other virtual currencies. It said that such exchanges are not regulated by the central bank or by any regulatory authority in the country.