Bank executives list cybercrime and IT disruption as the leading risk for banks. Expanding digital banking service channels and the increasing sophistication of cyberattacks have exacerbated rising vulnerabilities to cyber risk. Banks can easily experience reputational damage as a result of lost client information or denial of customer services.
Here are some statistics on the impact of breaches on the financial industry from Fortunly:
- The cost of cyberattacks in the banking industry reached $18.3 million annually per company.
- 8 out of 10 US citizens fear that businesses are not able to secure their financial information.
- According to FBI, the amount paid to ransomware scammers has reached nearly $1 billion per year.
- 92% of ATMs are vulnerable to hacks.
92% of ATM’s are vulnerable to hacks.
Financial establishments experience threats from a variety of sources led primarily by mobile applications and web portals. Cyber criminals may steal or manipulate valuable user data and or imitate banking apps in order to use them for criminal purposes.
Further, banking customers are moving away from using cash and checks and relying more on electronic banking to complete transactions.
In response to this shift, financial organizations continue to develop more web portals and mobile apps. Although these apps and portals are aimed at increasing convenience and enhancing the customer experience, they pose substantial risks in terms of cybersecurity. From lack of secure data storage to ineffective cryptography, there are a number of reasons why online banking portals and banking apps pose a special threat.
- Lack of server security
- Insecure or ineffective data storage
- Data is not secured in the transport layer from server to client and/or from client to server
- Data leakage on the user side
- Inadequate authentication and authorization during user log-in
- Inadequate or ineffective encryption
- Client-side injection (e.g. the injection or execution of malicious code on the mobile device through the mobile app)
There are really three major threat areas that banking institutions and financial organizations need to consider.
Personal protection of users
Keeping individual users secure is very difficult as you have very little control over their behavior. As an institution the most you can typically do is impose strict security requirements and controls on your web portal. This includes things like requiring strong passwords and implementing 2 factor authentication.
Technical protection
Where you have a higher degree of control is on the security measures you build into your web portals and applications. Using monitoring and blocking technologies that protect from things like client-side JavaScript injection will help ensure that users aren’t experiencing auto-redirect attacks or having login data skimmed.
Internal team and data protection
Especially relevant in today’s current environment, with much of your team accessing your network remotely, is the security of each endpoint you allow into your centralized protected network.
Making sure you have every device across the entire business unit protected is of paramount importance. Usually this is attempted with a VPN, which attempts to assure your staff can remotely connect through the most secure methods available is your best bet.
All this being said, the banking industry is ripe for a significant data breach.
The Helix22 Data Security SDK Started out as a Cryptocurrency
Fortunately, a perfect data security solution is available for the financial sector. Our data security product started as a cryptocurrency so financial security has been a part of Helix22 since its inception.
Our Motto
In Math We Trust
The Helix22 data security SDK does the following:
- Protects all your banks data at rest, in use and in transit
- Renders ransomware threats obsolete
- Secures transactions
- Eliminates human error
- Eliminates all malicious or interior attacks
- Reduces latency
- Installs with 5 lines of code
- Runs on any platform
- Provides perfect future/forward secrecy
- Delivers “zero-knowledge” encryption
- Compatible with all cloud, 3rd party and vendor services
- Is quantum ready – so there’s no need to upgrade when the time comes
- Requires no employee training
- Exceeds all gov’t and banking standards
- Meets compliance regulations
Helix22 delivers all this security assurance due to our genius engineering team that has invented a new model for data security that required an innovative look at the problem. The approach we took was to protect the data itself. Almost all other data security products try to build a perimeter or being fanatic on user credentials. However, once the product is breached or a password is stolen, even if it is 2FA or encrypted, your firms data is in the clear.
DNA BindingTM & user2user (U2U) encryption
You see, the Helix22 cryptography is embedded with the data itself through our inventive and patented process of DNA BindingTM. Therefore, even if credentials are stolen the data cannot be exfiltrated. This means that all data is 100% protected regardless of the type of attack.
Another substantial advantage of Helix22, is that it protects all data whether at rest, in use or in transit. All communication apps for example, only encrypt data while in transit. Therefore, that encryption become useless for internal IT security or Artificial Intelligence or Machine Learning experimentation. All data generated during these massive computing exercises is equally protected in real time. Plus, the latency period for the Helix22 is exponentially less than any other security product, so it actually contributes to faster processing times.
The tech engineers at BLAKFX invented and patented a genuine user2user (U2U) encryption. We manage data security and transmission through the truly brilliant and also patented universal Helix22 key service. The Helix22 encryption originates on your network or device, not just when an app is opened. This means, that when data arrives to our key server, it is already encrypted so all it needs to do is issue another key. Telegram cannot claim this level of security. This key will then only work with the intended device, which generates a matching key required to open the data.
In this protocol, we are truly a “zero-knowledge” server so your private communications and transmissions remain completely top secret. Even in the event that BLAKFX were subpoenaed, we can honor the request by just handing over the encrypted content…as that is literally all we have. Helix22 also only use keys just one-time and then destroys them. This way the data security is future forward prefect. Therefore, in our unique user2user encryption (U2U) world, there is no opportunity ever for any data leak.
This same protocol just described, can be the same with all your 3rd party vendors and suppliers. It does not matter in the least what platform they are running or what device they are using or even the type of data, it is all 100% protected. We do however, strongly advise that all your partner firms be utilizing Helix22 due to the nature of the data content. Helix22 can ensure that whatever data they are generating is protected as well.
Let’s take it a step further. Even if your bank were a victim of an internal attack or a victim of malicious open source downloads, there is no reason for concern. Any data that has been forwarded, downloaded, copied or saved cannot be exfiltrated. Period. We have the technology industries foremost data packets which are protected with multi-layered, military grade encryption algorithms that have already proven the ability to withstand penetration testing from MI5 and quantum computing attacks.
Helix22 is Built on Success and is Quantum Immune
Our founders also founded Wickr, which is used by the US military and has never been hacked since its inception in 2012. Helix22 is several generations enhanced since then.
One aspect of the banking industry, is that need to be especially concerned about a solution for communication that includes quantum resistant cryptography, particularly if the data you are transmitting would still be sensitive in 30 or so years.
The Helix22 encryption is quantum computing ready so no need to redo all your data security methodologies in a couple of years when everything else becomes obsolete.
We have developed our data security products for the future in all of our engineering.
We like to refer to Helix22 as “22nd Century Data Security.”
