MITB type attacks put customers off banking online

The fact that 64 % of respondents cited security concerns as a factor preventing them from migrating wholly to online banking doesn’t come as a surprise to me. Why? Because what we’re hearing from the market is that these types of attacks are definitely on the increase.

The security threat in the online channel has never gone away. As anyone who’s been hit by fraudsters will attest, vectors such phishing attacks, key-loggers, Man-in-the-Middle and Man-in-the-Browser attacks, and other types of fraud such as SIM Swaps and Call Forward Unconditional, all pose a very real problem. And it’s important that banks realise that security is a differentiator. Today’s results help illustrate that – they clearly show that security issues (or even just perceived security issues) have the potential to at best discourage, or at worst alienate, customers.

Solving the problem doesn’t have to mean hampering customer experience. The key is to take a multi-layered, multi-factor approach to authentication. By using a combination of visible and invisible layers of security and by ensuring that there is an out of band element and that the solution works in real time, fraud becomes virtually impossible. It’s only at this point, when decisive action is taken to really cut fraud in the online banking channel, that we’ll see a notable increase in the number of people who bank solely online.