One-Third of Banking Account Takeover Attempts Successful

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The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), which works with the Department of Homeland Security, has released a study indicating that attacks on customer bank accounts have increased considerably in recent years.

The FS-ISAC, in collaboration with the American Bankers Association, surveyed large financial institutions to collect data on fraud attempts. The responding banks reported a combined 314 break-in attempts in 2011, up from 239 in 2010 and 87 in 2009.

Roughly one third of these attempts were successful in fraudulently transferring money out of hacked customer accounts, with institutions losing a total of $777,064, which is actually a decrease from $3.12 million in 2010. Customers lost only $489,672 in 2011, down from $1.16 million in 2010.

While less money was ultimately siphoned from banks and customers than in past years, there are new attack strategies on the horizon, which may push these numbers up in 2012. Threats, defenses, and vulnerabilities continually emerge, so stay tuned as we track the shifts in our evolving security landscape.

When asked what they were doing to prevent fraud and theft, banks’ three most common responses were:

  • Increased customer education
  • Multi-factor authentication
  • Anomalous behavior detection

This year, the FFIEC updated the security requirements recommended for banks. One of the recommendations encourages financial institutions to employ complex device identification. Oregon-based security firm iovation goes a step further offering device reputation technology, which builds on device identification by offering real-time risk assessments, exposing any history of fraud associated with a particular device or group of devices, and investigating relationships between devices and accounts that have been associated with fraud in order to expose fraudsters working in cahoots to steal from online businesses.

Robert Siciliano, personal security and identity theft expert contributor to iovation, discusses identity theft  in front of the National Speakers Association. (Disclosures)