Monday, August 13, 2012

Phishing the financial and banking seas

Thanks to the emergence of mobile devices, social networks, and new technologies such as Near Field Communications, the attack surface area against financial institutions has expanded at an explosive rate, providing cybercriminals more opportunities than ever to go "fishing" at your CU's expense.

Image source: Hitchster / CC BY 2.0
The top threats are payment card fraud, cheque fraud, phishing/vishing, account takeover, and third-party point-of-sale skimming, with about 80% of such incidents experienced by banking customers and an exponential escalation of malware attacks targeting financial transactions. Many large financial institutions are confident in their security measures and preparedness against the modern threat landscape, but recent history suggests otherwise.

Yet the painfully long list of increased security breaches within the past year is only the tip of the iceberg. As pointed out by U.S. Vice Admiral J. Mike McConnel (Rtd), "if you can just contaminate the data in one large bank, you could cause global banking to collapse."

Is your CU one of these overconfident institutions? Take a look at this Malta Independent report for a reality check...

No comments: