The financial services industry is inherently more at risk of cyberattacks than any other industry. Financial sector includes everything from investment consultants and stocks to insurance and banking; naturally, the money that floats within the financial industry is very tempting to hackers. In fact, according to Verizon’s 2019 Data Breach Investigations Report — 71% of recent cyber attacks were motivated by money itself, nothing else.
Besides, as every other aspect of modern-day life, more and more financial services are moving online. It is inevitable that cyber attacks on financial institutions become more frequent and more viscous. As a response to this trend financial data security standards have no other choice but to evolve as well. This is why secure authentication has become one of the cybersecurity standards in recent years.
2fa service providers cater to banking cyber security standards specifically now. Protectimus is one of such 2-factor authentication providers, our financial security solutions are fine-tuned, affordable and easily applied.
Today we will look closely into what financial cyber attacks Protectimus MFA can protect from and how exactly we achieve the best results in this endeavour.
From what dangers does 2-factor authentication protect financial organizations
The vast majority of financial services cyber attacks start with compromised (stolen) login credentials. The bad news is — there are numerous ways to steal credentials:
- phishing, vishing, smishing, pharming
- brute force attacks
- keyloggers
- social engineering
- man in the middle attacks
and many more.
The good news is — add two-factor authentication to website login and you eliminate these threats.
| Read also: The Most Common Ways of Credit Card Fraud
Why one password isn’t enough
We now know that the famous Yahoo hack back in 2013 affected an astonishing number of 3 billion accounts. The more recent Marriott data breach is estimated to have jeopardized about 500 million accounts. These numbers look terrifying, but these are a fact of the times. So much so, that an FBI agent who investigates cyber attacks told the Wall Street Journal that every US citizen can expect that their personally identifiable data (all of it) has already been stolen and sold on the dark web.
Yet, “12345”, “test1” and “password” are still the most used passwords; one password is reused on average 13 times by employees; stolen and reused credentials produced 80% of data breaches in 2019. Terrifying, isn’t it?
These are the reasons why information security in banking and financial industry has to be taken more seriously. Simple and easily stolen user password is by far not enough to create any semblance of financial cyber security. That’s why we must insist — 2FA adds the much needed second layer to the financial data security and has to be implemented by every financial service.
| Read also: How to Choose and Use Strong Passwords
Why Financial Services Choose Protectimus’s 2FA Solution
There’s quite a number of financial institutions among Protectimus clients, so we had an opportunity to deeply understand the industry’s needs and fine-tune our solutions to cyber security in banking as well as to other types of financial cryptography and data security.
Protectimus MFA solution will protect both the end-user accounts and the corporate infrastructure. We believe finance and cyber security have to go hand in hand, so we developed a feature for protecting transactions specifically (CWYS or Confirm What You See method). We made the cheaper options for end-users and offer to deliver OTPs (one-time passwords) and notifications via chatbots in various messengers. The Protectimus 2FA platform is available in both cloud and on-premises.
But the most valuable thing the Protectimus platform offers is our flexibility and readiness to customize our MFA solutions and their features to fit any requirements. Be it a small company, or a huge corporation that requests the customizations, we are equally ready to go the extra mile.
So, let’s take a closer look at everything Protectimus can offer for financial cybersecurity.
1. OTPs can be generated on the basis of users’ transactions data (Confirm What You See) |
Confirm What You See (CWYS) method of multi-factor authentication is the best cybersecurity industry can offer for bank data security. This ingenious method protects from all kinds of malware created for the single purpose of intercepting the OTPs. With CWYS OTPs are compiled using the current user transaction. So, if the user is transferring money, the data from this transaction (sum, currency, the user’s personal data, etc.) is used to generate an OTP for this specific transaction. Thus, even if the password is intercepted the criminals won’t be able to use it. This is the information security financial services need. Currently, 4 of Protectimus tokens support CWYS: Protectimus SMS, Mail, chatbots and the 2FA application. |
| 2. Advanced OTP delivery methods |
As many other 2-factor authentication service providers Protectimus has a range of tokens available. Everything from programmable hardware tokens and classic tokens to SMS and chatbots. Which tokens are the best for finance though? We believe the best cybersecurity financial services can get for the end-users is delivered by the 2FA chatbots. Our chatbot allows for two-factor authentication integration without any additional apps or other types of software. All the end-user has to do is connect to the bot in Telegram, Messenger, Viber or any other messaging service they like. Protectimus will send OTPs right there. The bot can also send other notifications which allows the company to significantly cut the budget on SMS delivery. All 2-factor authentication providers agree that messengers are by far more secure than SMS, so our unique chatbot OTP delivery method is the most effective cyber security financial industry can get while saving money for both themselves and the end-user. |
3. Adaptive authentication provides convenience to end-users |
We understand perfectly well that no-one likes typing in OTPs, especially if they are required for every entry into something constantly used. So we made our MFA platform analyze the user’s environment; the system recognizes such things as the browser used and its version, the operating system, the system language, the resolution of the screen if there are plugins installed or not, etc. As a result of this analysis, the OTP is asked for only if a certain discrepancy threshold is surpassed. |
4. Geo and Time filters help to enhance corporate security |
These two features Protectimus platform comes with create a level of security service finance companies need to protect their corporate accounts better. The geographic filter will allow or block access for specified countries. So if you need to allow access only to US-based users or block users from specific countries you can do so easily. Another ingenious solution to create the tight cybersecurity financial corporate environment needs is the time filter. The platform will allow access only in specified business hours, so even if an employee leaves their 2FA token in the office and someone physically breaks in, the token won’t do the criminal any good, the system simply won’t allow them access. |
5. Easy Integration and administration |
As has already been mentioned above — our specialists are ready to help integrate the Protectimus platform or add 2-factor authentication to website for any type or size of the client company. Even the free plan comes with an API for integration with Protectimus and a variety of plugins is available to make the integration a matter of a few clicks. These plugins include Winlogon & RDP, OWA, ADFS, RoundCube, Citrix Netscaler & XenApp, RADIUS, and even direct integration in AD, LDAP, databases is available to make any system cyber secure. Moreover — one Protectimus account supports multiple projects and additional admin accounts can be created, which makes it easy to divide and delegate responsibilities thus managing the workload and different groups of users efficiently. The platform comes with all the analytics and reporting tools a company might need. And the responsible admins will get notifications about any significant events occurring within the system if they choose to. When all is said and done, Protectimus is a versatile and flexible solution to provide the highest level of information security for any type of financial institution internally as well as peace of mind to their end-users. |
6. Cloud Service & On-Premise Platform |
As is the case with most other 2fa providers Protectimus platform is available as a cloud-based service. This is a modern, easy and fast solution. But a lot of businesses, especially those in the financial sector, have very strict security policies. These companies simply can not utilize a cloud-based platform. So we made sure Protectimus MFA is available as an on-premise solution, thus giving full control to the client company. Both solutions can be purchased as a subscription or as a lifetime license. |
| Read also: The Pros and Cons of Different Two-Factor Authentication Types and Methods
Conclusions
Financial sector cyber attacks are becoming more vicious and more frequent with every passing year. It comes with reason that cybersecurity and financial services must come hand-in-hand, otherwise, the end-users can not feel safe in this day and age. The only thing the financial sector can do now is to rely on the cyber security industry and integrate the best available solutions as fast as possible. And Protectimus MFA platform is the best the industry can offer.
If you still have any questions do not hesitate to give us a call, we are happy to communicate and come up with the most fitting way to protect your business, your invaluable clients and their assets.
Read more:
- 10 Steps to Eliminate Digital Security Risks in Fintech Project
- Active Directory Two-Factor Authentication
- 2FA Chatbots vs. SMS Authentication
- Two-factor authentication for Windows 7, 8, 10
- Top 7 Tips How to Protect Yourself from Phishing Scams
- PayPal Two-Factor Authentication with Hardware Security Key
- SMS Authentication: All Pros and Cons Explained
- How to Secure Bitcoin Wallet
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2020-08-13
The increase in the number of data breach incidence in the banking and insurance sectors leads to the high adoption of BFSI Security solutions.