European banks need to improve transaction and data security to keep pace with the rise in mobile banking, a security expert has claimed.
According to research conducted by mobile security firm Omlis, the number of users adopting mobile payments in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is predicted to increase to 44.6 million users by Q4 2015, delivering more than $42bn in revenue.
In the report, Omlis identifies Poland as one of Europe’s most innovative payments markets, with nine banks confirming plans to commercially launch cloud-based mobile payment services in early 2015. But the research also identifies the CEE region as “a hub for large-scale, global cybercrime”.
Quoting a joint report released by Kaspersky Lab (an international software security group) and Interpol, Omlis states that out of 3.4 million malware detections on the mobile devices of over 1 million global users, more than 50% of attacks were aimed at users in Russia, Ukraine, Poland and Belarus.
Nearly 60% of the detected malware attacks were targeted at gaining unauthorised access to the financial information of exposed users. Meanwhile, 90% of mobile-banking Trojan attacks between 2013 and 2014 designed to steal online banking credentials were targeted at CEE Android users.
This issue is not limited to the CEE region, with recent findings by the City of London police commissioner Adrian Leppard confirming that over 80% of cyber breaches remain unreported especially by banks, who “are happy to write off the incidents as costs, thereby costing the consumer collectively and funding ongoing cybercriminality”.
Markus Milsted, founder and CEO of Omlis, commented: “The growth of the mobile channel is rapidly attracting attention from cybercriminals and, as a result, financial institutions must provide complete mobile security solutions designed specifically to cost-effectively secure mobile transactions.”