MFA-optional banks leave safe doors (and accounts) wide open for thieves to pillage
Financial institutions are putting their clients at risk in the name of convenience.
Stay secure in the finance sector. Explore the latest in financial cyber security news, trends, and best practices to protect valuable assets and data.
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Background for this topic.
Finance covers the institutions, markets, and services that move, store, lend, invest, and insure money. Its distinctive assets include customer identities, account balances, payment instructions, trading positions, claims, and confidential business data. Operations depend on core banking and ledger systems, payment networks, market-data feeds, identity services, and external processors or cloud providers. Integrity and availability are especially important: an unauthorized change to beneficiary or settlement data can cause direct loss, while an outage can interrupt payments or trading and complicate time-sensitive reconciliation.
Security work therefore focuses on online banking and trading interfaces, APIs, privileged access, credentials, and third-party connections. Useful controls include phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication, least privilege, transaction signing or approval separation, encryption, tamper-evident logging, and anomaly monitoring. Privacy protections apply to personal and financial information; PCI DSS is relevant where payment-card data is handled, alongside jurisdiction-specific financial rules. Vulnerability management should prioritize internet-facing and legacy systems, while incident response needs capabilities to contain fraudulent transactions, preserve evidence, reconcile ledgers, and restore trusted service through tested backups or failover.
Weekly headline count for the current query.
Financial institutions are putting their clients at risk in the name of convenience.
Open API could reveal everything an attacker needs to impersonate bank officials
Bosses told to step up and get cybersecurity right
15-year-old among six arrested after Dutch cops target suspected bank fraud call center
Chatbot has no respect for timing of its maker's financial announcement
Volume and sensitivity of the data cited as chief concerns
Great idea, guys. Let's keep all of the data in an Excel file with weak password protection
Great idea, guys. Let's keep all of the data in an Excel file with weak password protection PWNED Welcome, once again, to PWNED, the weekly column where we recount the adventures of IT explorers who found their own pile of quicksand and then jumped right into it. This week's story involves keeping sensitive information in a very vulnerable place and then not protecting it adequately.…
Names, addresses, dates of birth, and bank details accessed, though not passwords Basic-Fit, Europe's largest gym chain, has confirmed data including the bank details of around a million customers was stolen from its systems.…
Who needs MFA when you've got EvilTokens? Hundreds of organizations have been compromised daily by a Microsoft device-code phishing campaign that uses AI and automation at nearly every stage of the attack chain to ultimately snoop through corporate email inboxes and steal financial data.…
Global bank's devs have some cleaning up to do after cloud creds found in website code Computer security boffins have conducted an analysis of 10 million websites and found almost 2,000 API credentials strewn across 10,000 webpages.…
They cleverly mimic most traits of a real phone Smartphones have fast become the basis of our digital identities, securing payment systems and bank accounts. Now virtual devices that pretend to be real handsets have become a key tool for financial scammers, according to one company. …
AI helped send weekly threat signal count from 80 million to 400 billion, then helped response time shrink from two days to 30 minutes Australia’s Commonwealth Bank built its own agentic AI threat hunting tools, because vendors are too slow to develop tools that can cope with emerging AI-powered threats, according to General Manager of Cyber Defence Operations Andrew Pade.…
Interpol says fraud schemes using the tech are 4.5x more profitable AI is apparently good for the bottom line if your business is crime. Financial fraud schemes carried out with the help of artificial intelligence are 4.5 times more profitable than those that aren't enhanced, according to Interpol's latest estimates.…
17-year-old allegedly withdrew large sums of cash from ATMs Dutch police have arrested a 17-year-old boy who detectives suspect was responsible for 16 bank card frauds across the Netherlands.…
Advocate General urges rethink of PSD2 to speed compensation after scams Analysis One of the European Union's top legal advisors is trying to change how banks treat cybercrime victims – meaning they could enjoy greater financial protections sooner than expected.…
Could steal sensitive personal and financial data After a whopper of a Patch Tuesday last month, with six Microsoft flaws exploited as zero-days, March didn't exactly roar in like a lion. Just two of the 83 Microsoft CVEs released on Tuesday are listed as publicly known, and none is under active exploitation, which we're sure is a welcome change to sysadmins.…
Crooks used simple phone scam to compromise vendor account, spilling personal and financial data belonging to more than 15,000 people A voice-phishing scam targeting one of Ericsson's service providers has exposed the personal data of more than 15,000 individuals after attackers sweet-talked an employee into handing over access.…
MOIS-linked MuddyWater crew has a new, custom implant An Iranian cyber crew believed to be part of the Iranian Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) has been embedded in multiple US companies' networks - including a bank, software firm, and airport, among others - since the beginning of February, with more activity in the days following the US and Israeli military strikes, according to security researchers.…
Vulnerable citizens targeted by criminals purporting to represent fake police crisis department Scammers targeted Dubai citizens mere hours after missiles struck the city, attempting to gain access to their bank accounts, police have warned.…