New business research reveals that 33 per cent of financial services organisations don’t offer customers a secure channel for all their online payments.
That is despite the fact that 62 per cent have noticed a significant rise in customers making online financial transactions and 50 per cent believe online financial fraud is increasing.
The Kaspersky Lab survey involving more than 5500 company representatives, found that banks and payment companies are struggling to fully protect themselves and their customers from financial fraud.
But this is at a time when customers are using an ever-wider range of devices to conduct a growing number of financial transactions online.
“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,” says Ross Hogan, Head of SafeMoney Business Development, Kaspersky Fraud Prevention.
“38 percent 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.”
Findings show that two-thirds (65 per cent) say that customers are increasingly using different devices to make online payments, however 53 per cent have implemented two-factor authentication while 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.
In addition, 42 per cent extend such a solution to customer devices and 67 per cent implement a secure connection for all online payments.
Not surprisingly, Hogan says 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.
“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,” Hogan adds.
“Customers deserve better and so does the financial services organisation.”
Hogan says 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 10 per cent of respondents favoured this option,” he adds. “The preferred option is a specialist solution.”
