Following the news about the launch of leading UK bank Barclays’ £10m nationwide initiative to spread awareness about financial fraud risks, dubbed the ‘Great British Fraud Fightback’, Peter Carlisle, VP of EMEA at Thales e-Security commented below.
Peter Carlisle, VP of EMEA at Thales e-Security:
“The sheer number of consumers now becoming victims of cyber-crime and online fraud in the UK is simply startling. It’s clear that the days of creating an ‘original’ and hard-to-copy signature to protect our bank and identity details are well and truly behind us.
“A significant gap currently exists between the widespread use of the technology that plays a key role in every facet of our lives, and an understanding of how to use it safely.
“Today, the challenge for security professionals is the lack of consumer knowledge around what data they should protect. People are usually careful with debit and credit card numbers but will regularly give up Personally Identifiable Information like date of birth and street address, and will often use the same password on multiple sites.
“By gathering small amounts of information from many sites, those with malicious intent can piece together this information and use it as bait to access more sensitive information. This accumulated data can then be used to execute a serious attack spread out across the consumer’s entire digital life: their shopping, their social media and their banking.
“It is, therefore, critical that businesses change the way they think about data protection. This initiative should hopefully go some way in helping them to do just that.”
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