Mobile banking and payments a growing cyber risk to financials

A new survey by Ponemon Institute and Gemalto claims that mobile banking applications and mobile payment facilities may represent an area of serious vulnerability for financial institutions, as cyber-attacks become increasingly common. The report suggests that over 50% of mobile payments companies admit that their payment data has been compromised. As the use and dependence on mobile banking and mobile payments continues to grow, the risk associated with weak defences of this data will only become more pronounced.

Payment data is dangerously exposed as mobile payments soar

With mobile payments on the rise, a new reports warns that critical security flaws are exposing financial data to attacks.

More than half of companies admit that their payment data has been exposed to a security or data breach, showed the survey from Ponemon Institute and Gemalto, with attacks occurring on average twice a year.

Mobile payments are rapidly growing in popularity, with Apple Pay launching in the UK last year. Acceptance is expected to double in the next two years alone.

But the survey results show confusion not just about what’s being done with payment data, but even where it is.

Worryingly, more than half of those surveyed, 55 per cent, don’t know where the data is stored. Over two-thirds said that their firm wasn’t allocating enough resources to protecting data.

Additionally, the security practices in place are woefully lacking, as only one in three firms use multi-factor authentication and less than half use end-to-end encryption to protect data.

Jean-Francois Schreiber, senior vice president for identity, data and software services at Gemalto, called the results a “wakeup call for business”: