In recent years, fueled by the mobile revolution, the global payment landscape has undergone a sea of change. A myriad of Fintech players have opened unimaginable avenues for business and individuals alike. With the advancements in this sector, the financial vocabulary of a common man has not only upgraded but also has been updated from his computers to his, handheld devices with services like net banking, mobile banking, e-wallets, micro ATMs, virtual cards, value-added services and more.
With an aim to enhance customer experience, regulatory interventions and fintech innovations have created a Cashless Ecosystem. But the Cashless Ecosystem safe is not completely secure and is vulnerable to attacks. So how can we contribute towards protecting the cashless ecosystem?
Even though traditionally financial institutions and banks have opted for a military-grade security system but it is advisable to stay a step ahead of the evolving cybercriminal tactics. Most of the complex and renowned cyber-attacks have displayed a strategy where the hacker targets the end-users through their banking institutional databases, computers, software’s, mobile devices, hardware, switches and more.
In a layman’s language, attackers are planning to siphon off your hard-earned money and various heists around the world have highlighted the increasing threat of spear phishing. Many of these phishing attacks are difficult to detect as they lack the necessary files and cannot be traced by legacy antivirus tools.
As a trend of the evolving cybercriminal universe, the attackers obfuscate their code so security researchers cannot reverse engineer it, plus, the code is so smart that it checks itself, if it’s being run in a sandbox and refuses to operate in any virtual environments.
Emerging Applications and their security risks
Threat actors often exploit the inherent features of a target’s mobile phone. For example, Android systems allow notifications from any apps that are active in the background to come on top while using a completely different application. In order to trick users in sending their sensitive information to the threat actors, the malware authors have devised a code that intercepts the above action with an overlay.
Quite similarly, fake apps contain banking Trojans, these apps can be downloaded from the play store or from a download prompt that is displayed over a lot of online video services. When these malicious apps are downloaded on a device that also houses a banking app, the user’s financial information is compromised.
For the above-given reasons, users should ensure that they conduct any financial transactions over a secure Wi-Fi since public Wi-Fi’s are prime targets for cybercriminals.
Everyone is a target.
The truth is, data breaches have become a common occurrence around the world, it’s not only the individuals at risk but also large corporates with numerous security and compliance certifications, that face the threat of a potential security breach.
What makes matters worse is that many people use a single set of login credentials for a different set of accounts they use and cybercriminals have the tools that could check websites for reused passwords. Which means, if hackers gain access to one set of login credentials, they can gain access to multiple accounts.
Cybercriminals also run scripts that can intercept SMS authentication codes and use Trojans to redirect any calls from financial institutions. This enables the hackers to impersonate legitimate users and conduct illegal transactions of their behalf.
Are you equipped to protect your financial data?
In today’s era, which features different operating systems running on various mobile devices, each device has its own set of vulnerabilities. Some of these vulnerabilities have been discovered ages ago and some of them are yet to be patched. Hackers can use this information to gain unfettered access to sensitive database.
Despite the strong cybersecurity capabilities of banks and payment services, to protect their credentials and personal information it is incumbent upon individual users.
This means, to stay one step ahead of the evolving mobile threat landscape, one must resort to basic security practices like creating strong and unique passwords along with multifactor authentication.
Along with all of the above measures, we suggest the use of a universal protector for your systems that can protect your online existence and ensure your hard-earned money and your digital existence is safely secured.
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