As the mobile market continues to skyrocket and gain new users, financial industries are finding it increasingly more difficult to protect their customers against online fraud. Add in the seemingly never-ending wave of company breaches and data loss, coupled with an increasing number of users relying on mobile for their banking needs, and you have a recipe for potential disaster. As a result, customers are pressuring banks to add features and functionality, but at the moment, the US is behind the rest of the world in rolling out such features. Fortunately, there are ways for banks to mitigate these risks and fight back against these threats to their customers. Here are five questions the financial industry needs to be asking about security.
- Q: What would the cost be for a single fraud breach within my banking channel?
Why you should be asking it: From breaches at JP Morgan and Sony, to the recent Anthem data loss, we know data is under attack, and this is not a new target. When a financial institution suffers a single fraud breach, the costs expand beyond the data and on to customer trust, future business, and insurance.
- Q: What is the most vulnerable point in our banking network?
Why you should be asking it: Breaches big and small can occur from one small dent in the armor, and when an exploitable weakness is discovered by cybercriminals, it would not be long until the full security layer is compromised. In the complete path from endpoint to data storage, where and when will that most vulnerable point appear?
- Q: How do mobile threats attack our customers directly?
Why you should be asking it: Mobile is the hot new target for cybercriminals, who are quickly learning new ways to mask threats and make them more difficult to detect. Malicious mobile apps are rapidly on the rise and established PC threats like ransomware are trickling down to mobile devices.
- Q: How can banks fight these threats and protect their customers?
Why you should be asking it: Educating customers on the importance of security is crucial, but that’s only part of the battle. Mobile security is a must today, but not all solutions are created equal. Manually downloading mobile antivirus requires some customer intervention and many users don’t even consider this crucial security step on their personal devices. Fortunately, there’s a ‘bet-of-both-worlds’ solution.
- Q: How many people will be using their mobile devices for banking in 2017?
Why you should be asking it: The mobile market continues to skyrocket and shows no signs of slowing down. With an ever-increasing number of users connecting and downloading apps, the risk of being exposed to mobile malware also increases.
David Duncan will be speaking at the ISMG Los Angeles Fraud Summit on February 24, 2015 at the Hilton Los Angeles/Universal City. For more information, please click here: http://www.ismgcorp.com/fraud-summit/los-angeles-11
