“There is a growing concern about the damage to brand reputation and brand equity when a phishing attack is successful and gets media attention,” says Justin Doo, managing director of Trend Micro Middle East and North Africa. “One of the biggest risks banks face here is negative customer perception of the banking operations,” agrees Maria Medvedeva, regional director for security management business unit, CA EMEA Eastern markets. “In Dubai, we have read about different banks that have been subjected to fraud, such as phishing e-mails or physical damage to their ATMs. People see it as lack of security control and this causes absolutely negative perception and customer dissatisfaction.”
For a customer, a security fraud means that the bank has failed to implement systems or some type of security control to protect its customers. Such concerns have led to the slow uptake of online banking, according to Doo. “Most banks are spending more money gearing up for growth in online banking than they are spending gearing up for growth in physical location expansion,” he says. Research has shown that the cost of a transaction where somebody visits a branch and does an over-the-counter transaction is nearly ten times the cost of the same transaction that is carried out online,” Doo continues. “However, there is a global slowdown, at the moment, when it comes to internet banking uptake.
To encourage people to adopt online banking, Ayman Majzoub, general manager of Pointsec Mobile Technologies Middle East and Africa, insists banks should put more emphasis on better security tools. For instance, we go and secure one server or secure one desktop. “Banks in the US are already on stage three and four because they are trying already to improve on alignment of business by introducing more and more reporting mechanisms.” Majzoub believes that the lack of regulatory policies is the main reason why banks in the Middle East are not actively doing more to improve security.
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