A third, 33 per cent, of financial services don’t offer customers a secure channel for all their online payments. This is despite the fact that 62 per cent of these organisations have noticed a significant rise in their customers making financial transactions online, and 50 per cent believe online financial fraud is increasing.
A survey into businesses by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International found that many banks and payment companies are struggling to fully protect themselves and their customers from financial fraud at a time when customers are using an ever-wider range of devices to conduct a growing number of financial transactions online. Two-thirds (65 per cent) say that customers are increasingly using different devices to make online payments, yet just 53 per cent have implemented two-factor authentication and only 50 per cent have introduced a specialised, real-time anti-fraud solution– even though 22 per cent believe this is the most effective form of protection available. Less than half (42 per cent) extend such a solution to customer devices and only 67 per cent implement a secure connection for all online payments.
Near half, 48 per cent accept that they are only mitigating risk rather than removing it altogether; and 29 per cent say it is cheaper to deal with online financial fraud incidents as they arise rather than to try to prevent them from happening.
Kirill Slavin, general manager UK and Ireland, Kaspersky Lab, said: “The study shows that banks and payment organisations are finding it difficult to manage online financial fraud in today’s connected, omni-channel consumer landscape. 38 per cent of the organisations we spoke to admit that it is increasingly difficult to tell whether a transaction is fraudulent or genuine, with a worrying one in three opting for a ‘we’ll deal with it as it happens’ approach to fraud protection. If you consider that our own research uncovered 22.9 million financial malware attacks in 2014, targeting 2.7 million customers worldwide, it is clear that dealing with each incident individually is not a viable, long-term option. Customers deserve better and so do the financial services.”
The study found that general internet-security software solutions are not widely regarded as an effective method for preventing the increasingly well-disguised phishing and malware attacks that can lead to financial fraud. Less than ten per cent of respondents favoured this option.
About the IT Security Risks Survey 2015
By Kaspersky Lab and B2B International, it involved more than 5,000 company representatives, including 131 banks’ and payment services’ representatives, from 26 countries.
