News broke that hackers carried out at least one cyber-attack against banks and other lenders every week last year. Figures from the Financial Conduct Authority, the City watchdog, showed there were 89 attacks against firms it regulates last year, compared with five in 2014. Leigh-Anne Galloway, Cyber Security Resilience Lead at Positive Technologies commented below.
Leigh-Anne Galloway, Cyber Security Resilience Lead at Positive Technologies:
“The number of attacks performed against banks last year is not surprising. As banking services are becoming more accessible to clients every year, using advanced technologies to make payments and transfers, cyber criminals are finding new ways to take advantage of these advancements. According to our research, threats are becoming more dangerous with the total number of critical vulnerabilities growing by 8%, and medium-severity vulnerabilities by 18% in 2016. The majority of those threats are related to flaws in mechanisms for identification, authentication, and authorization of users.
“Banks are, indeed, having a hard time keeping up with today’s digital bank robbers, because threats are always changing and it can be difficult for security teams to keep up. This is where technology such as artificial intelligence and machine learning is starting to help banks fight back. In a world where the problem is overwhelming, it takes a lot of the onerous and time sensitive decision making away from humans, not being responsive to attacks, but proactively and continuously protecting banks at pace and scale.”
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