As banks try to make their services convenient through adoption of mobile technologies and internet banking, hackers are smiling. It is the time to harvest.
The good news is that you don’t have to be tech savvy to hack into any financial institution. Banks are more interested in buying state-of-art banking applications, firewalls and other security mechanisms at the expense of training their staff in basic computer security and how to be safe while on-line.
This article is an eye opener. With increasing high staff turnover in financial institutions, the risk of hacking is on the rise. New and existing staff must be trained in basic computer security as the first line of defense. Everyone seems to acknowledge this, but few are ready to commit resources to ensure their staff are trained.
Hackers have found that it is much easier to exploit user ignorance than break-code.
As I wrote in this article, social media era, how safe is your information assets. The good guys cannot keep up with the bad guys. In Uganda, the risk is very high because computer security is not yet a key priority. And bank CEOs still think [ignorantly] that once you implement a good banking application, you will not experience cyber security breaches.
In the past couple of months, many banks have been experiencing an increase in frauds to a tune of US $5m quarterly. Keep in mind that majority of the cases are never reported.
As a bank customer, just keep an eye on your bank statement.
Copyright Mustapha b Mugisa, CFE. 2014 All rights reserved.
