Few Companies Protect Financial Transactions On Client Endpoints- Kaspersky Lab

According to a survey conducted by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International, only 52% of financial companies and 46% of firms engaged in e-commerce believe they need to take enhanced measures to protect financial transactions. Even fewer companies in this sector provide protection for their customers’ devices.

E-commerce companies are the least focused on protecting financial operations – 16% of them say they are not interested in installing special security solutions against online fraud and only 38% of them are willing to invest in such tools.

Overall, 30% of companies working with cash flows on the Internet do not provide and are not planning to provide protection on customer devices during transactions, even though this is the weakest point in the security chain and could lead to clients losing money and companies losing profits and reputation. 28% of companies do not care about installing anti-fraud software on customers’ mobile devices while 30% of companies do not try to protect their own information infrastructure against fraud. This nonchalant attitude to the protection of payments may lead to negative feedback from customers: three quarters of users expect financial companies to take responsibility for safeguarding all their devices and 40% of those surveyed are sure the company will reimburse any lost money.

However, as Kaspersky Lab statistics show, the number of cyber threats targeting financial data of individual users is growing constantly. For example, according to Kaspersky Security Network, the amount of attacks using malicious banking software reached 1.4 million during the period between 19 May and 19 June, a 15% increase compared to the period from 19 April to 19 May.

“Every day, criminals are less likely to rob banks by running in and yelling ’This is a robbery!’ before shooting at the ceiling. More and more crimes are migrating to the online world. Cybercriminals target banks by going after the least protected links in the chain – customer devices and the online financial transactions carried out with those devices. In order to protect customers and their money – and hence the reputation of the company – financial organizations are encouraged to use integrated, multi-layered solutions that provide proactive fraud prevention to maximize effectiveness and optimize user experience. The use of a unified platform that provides protections both at the customer endpoint and within the bank’s environment provides context driven, comprehensive prevention that point solutions fail to deliver,” says Ross Hogan, Global Head of the Fraud Prevention Division at Kaspersky Lab.

For example, the Kaspersky Fraud Prevention platform introduced by Kaspersky Lab earlier this year is designed specifically for banks, payment systems and e-commerce companies. The server side installed in the financial company is used to monitor all transactions for evidence of suspicious activity indicating fraud. Applications installed on user devices provide a secure environment for online payments. Deploying a multi-component solution makes it possible to protect all stages of the transaction, while Kaspersky Fraud Prevention’s additional services alert the bank’s security services to any new threats and help to reinforce reliable security policies.