Online banking risks

One in five online banking transactions are vulnerable to some form of security breach, despite recent improvements to online security, according to new research by Queensland University of Technology’s Information Security Institute reported by iTNews.

According to the study’s authors, designing secure online banking systems is difficulty because in most cases it is human error that leads to the breach rather than some problem with the technology.

To test the average security of an online transaction, the study created a simulated online bank and asked participants undertake a number of online financial transactions.

They then subjected the transactions to common forms of online fraud, testing the user’s ability to detect when they were being diddled.

In the result, the most sophisticated forms of online attacks worked with 61% of participants in the study. Even more simple forms of attack drew in 21% of users, a result the studies author’s describe as worrying and unsatisfactory.