Future of security in banking.

Future of security in banking.

The way we innovate and use technology is constantly shaping the world we live in. The technological advancements in the past few decades have been quite astounding. From face recognition to the use of artificial intelligence, a wide range of industries now have technological innovation at their core.

Banking industry especially has been on the forefront of technological innovation. As people become more and more tech conscious, the banks have too moved on with the public to not only find ways to improve customer satisfaction but to also protect themselves from exploitation.

As the public is now relying more and more on the banks instead of dealing in transactions privately, it has become a prime concern both for the public and for the banks to ensure discretion and protection. The technological advancements have not only benefited the banking industry but also criminals who would want to exploit them.

Hackers are now able to use quantum computing to break the encryptions that provide protection and access the accounts of millions of people. In October 2016, 3.2 million card details were stolen using a malware security breach and were used in Chinese ATM’s.This kind of security breach threaten the entire banking system which functions solely on trust. If trust among the public towards the banking system crumbles, the whole industry would be under threat of collapse.

Quantum key distribution is a new innovation which could soon be used to mitigate this threat. Through this technology, the keys and codes to the bank accounts are changed every millisecond, making it impossible to crack trillions of codes of data to access meaningful volume of information.

The strategies used by cyber criminals to target financial firms are advanced and changing constantly.

What are the security options that should be adopted by the banking sector with the growing of online threats?

1- Risk associated with authentication in the cloud:

Financial institutions find it significantly simpler to react against known malware assaults compared to unknown attacks. This is why security for industries are outsourced. Fraud management and ID are being outsourced into the cloud. The cloud providers can give significantly a lot more information about attacks that might not have hit you but hit other people. By working with many companies, cloud companies would have solved a wide range of problems. Therefore, it is comprehensive and acts like another layer of defense.

2- Biometric Powered Bank Applications:

The big issue with passwords is that they are difficult to remember and simple to store in an unprotected area. Regardless of whether an application goes to extraordinary lengths to abstain from storing usernames and passwords within its protective data. It is difficult to prevent users from copy- paste their passwords into an unencrypted page or draft email for quick reference. Biometrics guarantee an authentication technique that is easier than remembering or copy-pasting a password. One of the approaches to biometrics is voiceprint ID, in which the user is asked to repeat a series of digits. The phrase might be the users mobile number or phone number. To eliminate the risk that an attacker has recorded the user’s voice, the requested phrase can also be random phrases or a random series of digits.

One of the disadvantages of voiceprint ID is that the user may be in a noisy place. In such circumstances, another promising strategy is facial recognition.  But just like voiceprint ID, facial recognition might also be vulnerable to “Replay options” with technology developing rapidly.

To counter this issue, one of the ideas is to register facial biometrics as a movie. “You would have to rotate your head to the right and then do a 180-degree rotation to the left.”

3- Credit cards with token generators:

One of the fundamental issues with token producing devices is that they are bulky. But imagine if you could get a one-time password from a credit card that is in your wallet?

An interesting challenge is having a token generator embedded in the frame of a credit card. You can get a PIN protected OTP circuit on the same device along with an EMV chip.

The batteries last for about 2 years and it’s the same size as a credit card.

Source: https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/contactless-credit-card-security-pin-generator-584426314