Digital Trust

The majority of financial institutions have made the digital transformation – offering online banking through their website or on mobile applications.

Among all generations, 57% of Americans surveyed said online banking offered a level of convenience they lacked at brick-and-mortar locations. This convenience is now an industry standard that consumers expect, and though the digital transformation is necessary, it comes with significant risks.

Cyberattacks are on the rise, and as such 100% of financial institutions decided to either increase or maintain their fraud prevention budgets in 2019. This is indicative of the ever-evolving fraud landscape and the need for institutions to protect themselves and their customers. Fraudsters are constantly transforming existing techniques and coming up with new methods to compromise sensitive information, which they can use to steal money out of online bank accounts.

Monetary loss and reputational damage can be difficult for many organizations to recover from, making it critical for banks to implement a fraud prevention strategy that secures trust and reliability across their customer population.

When it comes to ensuring digital trust, it is important to implement a solution that is frictionless and guarantees comprehensive protection. Gaining trust with customers comes with time, but it only takes one poorly handled fraud event to tarnish that confidence. To safeguard the digital environment, it is important to consider the different channels through which users access online banking.

The website is the first thing to consider; look for possible defacement – reviewing weblogs and monitoring for phishing. The frequency of the average phishing campaign has increased per week by 81% since last year. Attackers are adopting new methods to phish users, so having a comprehensive solution in place to prevent targeted phishing attacks is the best approach.

It is difficult to control how users access online banking and the type of device they use; often times individuals will access via an infected device. Adware was the most prevalent type of consumer malware in 2018, regularly infecting hundreds of millions of devices at a time. When customers access online banking using a device that is infected with malware, they are at high risk of falling victim to an adware attack. These attacks typically manifest in the form of a web injection, prompting customers to enter sensitive personal information.

With a lack of control over this scenario, it is important for organizations to have some visibility. It is vital to obtain a solution that can tell you who was impacted by these types of attacks and what information was compromised.

Dangers Posed by Smartphones, Tablets

Another important channel to monitor when considering digital banking is the mobile application. Users are very reliant on mobile devices to complete daily tasks, including online transactions. Similar to the previous scenario, it is hard to control the health of customers’ mobile devices. Institutions struggle to ensure security at the app level without visibility or control over these devices (which could be rooted or jailbroken), putting users at risk of having their sensitive personal information compromised during a mobile banking session. Having control over which customers can access mobile banking is helpful in this scenario.

It is essential to implement strong cybersecurity solutions that will establish proactive mitigation and detection of threats that protect customers, and your organization’s reputation. Being able to trace events to a specific attack or infected device helps to aid these investigations. Knowing who was impacted enables the bank to take action with specific end users, establishing overall trust in your brand.

Find out more about how to establish digital trust by clicking here.