Over the past years, there have been rapid flows in the number of security attacks for the largest financial institutions, most importantly from external sources. According to E-Brief News reports, the Deloitte Global Security Survey exposed that 78 per cent of respondents confirmed a security infringe from outside the organization whereas 49 per cent had at least one internal infringe experience. Analysts cautions that magnitude of the security breaches points at a new reality for the global financial industry.



The International financial services sector is considering the threat acutely and has started putting into practice measures to ward off these threats. The reports of Scoop reveals that the most common attacks faced by the global financial industries were developed to extort money for the past twelve months. Phishing and pharming resulted for over half 51 per cent of external attacks, closely followed by Spyware/Malware attacks 48 per cent. Insider fraud 28 per cent and leakage of customer data 18 per cent were mentioned by respondents among the top three most common internal infringe.



CNET News has reported that hackers are making use of sophisticated ransomware called pernicious code, to take partial control of company’s user files, encrypt them and then ask for payment in exchange for the decryption key. Kaspersky Labsreported the encryption algorithms utilized by cyber crooks are getting more and more intricate and deceiving anti-virus companies. The Star said hi-tech fraudsters have infiltrated into dozens of SA companies and earned with more than R30m. whereas, criminal gangs are all set to misuse the Internet telephone network to commit thefts of bank account and credit card details. As reported by Times Online, the fraud is dubbed as Vishing instead of Phishing, being similar in technique. Phishing is the fraud that makes use of fake e-mails and websites to obtain bank details from innocent Internet users.



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