3rd Annual Future of Security in Banking and Financial Services Conference
FST put on a conference (presentations, audio files and agenda) to raise the awareness of security threats in the financial services sector each year this year there were a number of interesting speakers and topics on the agenda:
Implications for Security in an Increasingly Mobile Environment
(Greg Drumm, Head of Alliances and Emerging Payments, Consumer Cards and Unsecured Lending Retail Products, Australia, ANZ)
More than 50% of US Financial Institutions offer mobile payments and there are over 170 closed loop payment options. Wing payments is ANZ’s offering in Cambodia and aims to provide easy funds transfer to the 8M residents who do not have a traditional Bank account. There is a a great youtube video that goes into more detail about this technology.One question which doesn’t appear to be answered is how the system will combat fraudulent use of the system, in particular money laundering.
ID theft accounts for approximately US$4bn/year of fraud at the present time and there doesn’t appear to be an easy way to stop all of it happening. Solutions such as voice biometrics could be the way forward but at present they are costly and require a change in customer behaviour across a number of channels.
Greg went on to talk about sites such as Installsforyou.biz where it is possible to buy large numbers of compromised PC’s at bargain prices. These enable fraudsters to launch attacks on other sites or simply host Trojans which capture person information (including login credentials) and facilitate crimes against their owners.
An example of an Estonian ATM showed the dangers of leaving USB ports active on such devices. The fraudsters had uploaded malware which enabled them to obtain data from cards without their owners or the Bank even knowing. Even more worrying than this was the malware that was uploaded to an Iranian nuclear plant about six months ago…
