Banking Cybersecurity Trends: While the rise of cybercrime was widely recorded in 2020-2021, did you realize that the financial industry is facing challenges? In the past 12 months, 80% of financial companies have recorded a rise in cyber-attacks, up a remarkable 13% from 2019. The increase between February and April was 238 percent. One thing is sure: this is a banking wake-up call.
Below are five main variables that lead to a surge in cybercrime. What are the trends in attack in 2021, and how can the banking industry expand its intelligence to cope with the growing risk?
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Top 5 Biggest Cybersecurity Banking Trends
Banking Cybersecurity Trend No. 1 – Increased fraud and theft of identity
One of the major drivers to this year’s increase in financial cybercrime was a 60% increase in fraud. According to the most current Financial Crime Survey, card cloning is the biggest problem, with a 34-per-cent increase by 2020 alone.
Through enhanced cyber attacks, attackers can obtain physical card data easier with connected devices. Credit card readers or point-of-sale systems are novel attack vectors that enable access to stolen EMV data. This is then used to rob financial information or money from consumers, but it will only be successful when banks refuse to check the CVV. Unfortunately, research has shown that more than one-third of banks could be affected by this security defect.
It should also be noted that the cost of each fraudulent transaction has increased following COVID-19. In 2019, the value of each attempt to scam was 5.5% greater than in the previous year. Banks need to note that assailants become more and more blatantly aware of their strategies, believing that bank staff cannot operate under the radars of their criminal actions.
Banking Cybersecurity Trend No.2 – The Change in Online Spending and Communications
As a result of the pandemic, more consumers shop online, and bankers must analyze transactions differently. “Recent estimates reveal that more than 80 percent of credit cards in wallets have been compromised,” said Markus Bergthaler, Merchant Risk Council Director. Employees require profound training to see the difference between what seemed weird last year and the obvious impulse of lockdown this year.
Another noticeable development is an increase in the activity of the high-risk merchant code industries. Transport, telecommunications, file sharing, and the cloud are the most vulnerable industries of fraud and dispute. If you look at the increase in communications and transactions in these areas by 2020, it is easy to understand why cybercrimes have also increased. Bank employees will benefit from specialist preparation and help address the increased risk of quick increase in traffic in these industries from customers to enterprises accelerating cloud traffic overnight.
Trend No.3 – Increased banking infrastructure complexity
More than 70% of financial institutions were cyber-attacked in 2019, which is greater than in any previous year. A brief look at what the banks of today are against shows:
Outdated legacy systems: The maintenance of legacy infrastructure is high cost and involves various dangers, but most institutions cannot escape. In legacy systems, critical data and software are typically retained, causing bank staff to handle inefficient and antiquated processes every day.
Hybrid Deployments: As banks attempt to update and evolve digitally, cloud security deployments become increasingly common, incorporating cloud and server-free infrastructure. Because Legacy cannot be removed, banks have a hybrid reality that is hardest to imagine and safe.
Attackers exploit supplier chains and partner links to acquire a foothold in financial networks, from cloud storage to FinTech physical contacts that can use banking and regulatory infrastructure.
In preparing a campaign against any firm, the sophisticated the attackers realize that the more complex a network is, the less visibility security personnel and bank personnel would have.
Trend No.4 – Securing Remote Jobs in the Post-COVID World
The operational problems faced by banks in 2021 cannot be overestimated. KPMG expects to permanently disrupt the mobile banking business, with offshore service center closures requiring additional outsourcing and, often, long-term domestic labor. “Investing in the necessary workforce assistance and preparedness would be crucial in a challenging era,” says the financial manager.
Homework provides several issues, including maintaining BYOD rules, the truth of vulnerable home networks shared by many family members, and obsolete or insufficiently fitted appliances, from laptops and PCs to routers. Some issues are more important than merely HQ staff. Accounting transactions are estimated to reduce 40% by 2020 in the United States alone, with over 20,000 bank closures planned.
Banks must focus their efforts on incident management methods and playbooks for employee training in domestic circumstances or risk revealing deficiencies that are not recognized until they are too late.
Digital Banking Transitions
Naturally, it’s not only the workers who make an interactive transition. This change aligns with customer behavior changes. The bank branches closed three times a day long before this pandemic, as thousands of years dragged this conventional industry into the digital era. 27% of millennia have never visited a traditional bank.
The expansion of digital banking means that a wide range of security and privacy issues must be well understood, including:
- Digital identify theft and fraud.
- Sophisticated phishing scams
- Malware and ransomware
- Credential leaks
- Privilege escalation
- Compliance regulations
Both these and other risks can only be addressed by banking security knowledge.
It is not surprising that 87% of bank managers said they had greater cybersecurity difficulties last year. Banks and financial institutions will require more than one tool to tackle this concern properly. They need a dedicated, continuous security awareness program that is always up to date with their staff.