Banking is becoming more digital and convenient thanks to the Internet and a wide range of digital solutions. The latest trend in the industry is mobile banking. And risk management solutions are fundamental in mobile banking.
Many experts believe that mobile banking will soon become the primary banking channel for most of the population. Data from a US Federal Reserve Board survey confirms this prediction, clearly showing preferences towards mobile technologies from a consumer perspective:
- In 2015, 67% of millennials used mobile banking
- 40% of the unbanked had access to a smartphone
- 70% of the underbanked were smartphone owners
3 mobile banking risks
However, despite high interest in mobile banking, there are some obstacles to its further adoption as a service channel. Rahul Pangam, CEO of Simility, one of the leading fraud detection and analytics companies in Silicon Valley, believes that the most significant stumbling block to the mass adoption of smartphones as a primary banking channel is security.
As an expert in the field, Rahul highlights the 3 most common risks that banking application users are most vulnerable to today:
- Mobile malware and phishing, which is quite a new form of fraud but a very rapidly evolving one. This can include phishing attacks using text messages and the links within them, or self-downloading malicious applications that can hi-jack personal information or alter phone functionality.
- Misuse of security practices in mobile application development, when fraudsters steal user credentials from a mobile device and use them to gain financial reward.
- Business logic flaws, that can provide fraudsters with loopholes that can be exploited to gain financial rewards, without raising the suspicion of the user at any time.
You can download the original publication here.
Conclusion
When implementing a mobile security strategy, one of the crucial elements of the strategy is to set up a behavioral analytics system. This system should track user behavior within the mobile application. As a result, the system should use accumulated data to detect any deviations in the user behavior.
Such a system could help reduce fraud cases by quickly noticing any unusual and strange activity that isn’t in line with a typical user’s behavior and automatically block this activity, or at least temporarily suspend it.
If you want to find out more about risk management solutions and how they can help your bank secure its mobile application environment, you can read more about our StrongHold Fraud Prevention Platform.
