Money launderers will increasingly move away from the US dollar to the renminbi as US authorities continue to crack down on international banks’ AML systems. The shift will have consequences for London’s aspirations to become a global centre for RMB clearing and settlement.
The bailout of Espirito Santo Bank brings back unwelcome memories of the events of the last financial crisis and raises the spectre of moral hazard returning to the financial services industry both in the UK and abroad. But how far have we really come since those dark days of 2008 and the collapse of Lehman Brothers and how far do we still have to go? A quick look at recent events gives us a good indication.
A recent bout of high profile cyber-attacks on financial institutions across the UK, US and Canada has put the spotlight back on the importance of data security and the need to be diligent when it comes to cybersecurity within the banking industry
The news last month (June) that the Luuuk malware had snared its first victim, an unnamed European bank, has again highlighted the magnitude of the challenge facing the banking sector. While the reported theft of €500,000 during the course of a week certainly does not break any records, the discovery of what is believed to be a variant of the feared Zeus malware, is just the latest in a line of increasingly sophisticated cyber attacks
Banks need to do more to educate consumers about the ways in which they may be exposing themselves to fraud risks, according to a new report by Aite Group using data from ACI Worldwide, which notes that one in four consumers has been victimised by card fraud in the past five years.
One company grateful for the flurry of publicity given to the practice of front-running orders by the publication of Michael Lewis’s book Flash Boys earlier this year is New York-based Trillium, whose Surveyor market manipulation detection tool can be used to detect the practice.
“The fastest growing national security threat facing the [US], which also happens to face the financial services industry, is cyber-espionage, cyber-crime and cyber-terrorism” according to a former deputy and acting director of the Central Intelligence Agency, speaking at the SifmaTech conference in New York.
Specialist Java start-up Waratek has announced a security product intended to protect older Java code – which can contain five to 10 security vulnerabilities per 10,000 lines of code – from security breaches.
As the number of cybercrime incidents increases, financial institutions and their corporate customers should take renewed steps to protect their data – including using tokenisation and hosted payments pages, according to a new report by Chase Paymentech.
Security breaches at major institutions in financial services, healthcare and other industries are going undetected for months at a time and are often caused by basic errors of security, such as weak passwords, vulnerable applications and a lack of interest in security, according to a new report by cybercrime specialist company Trustwave.
Looked at from a data perspective, many new regulations have overlapping requirements that come back to customer data. Banking Technology joined forces with Markit І Genpact KYC Services and regulatory specialist JWG to look at how firms are approaching the challenges this poses.
Bank account fraud in the UK increased 48% in the first four months of this year, with a 57% rise in the number of identity frauds compared to the same period last year.
Four out of five organisations are leaving themselves open to payment fraud because of a lack of standardised payment workflows, according to a study by financial technology vendor SunGard.
Bitcoin is the poster child of the cryptocurrency world, but it’s not alone. Michael Mainelli and Bob McDowell take a look at the real-world implications of the rise of AltCoins
At the end of last year, Yahoo was hit by a malware attack. It affected over two million clients, mainly in Romania, Great Britain, France, Italy and Spain, putting their personal data at risk. Upon visiting the website between 27 December and 3 January, users received advertisements, some of which were malicious and infected users’ devices without even a click.
A group of major international banks have agreed to jointly develop and use the centralised Know Your Customer Registry announced by Swift at the start of the year.
Swift has created a dedicated Financial Compliance Services unit to manage a growing number of service offerings. The new unit will focus initially on the development of a Know Your Customer Registry planned for launch later this year as well as the integration and development of existing services.
2014 looks to be a good year for fraudsters as government and law enforcement struggle to come to terms with the issues and the continuing spread of mobile continues to offer them poorly-protected targets.
Bitcoin is more traceable but less regulated, less expensive but more volatile, and more decentralised but less accountable, than a regular currency. Feeling confused? That’s not the half of it, according to Ernst & Young.
Financial crime specialist Fiserv has just launched its Financial Crime Risk Management platform, which aims to help financial institutions to ward off financial crime and slash their risk.
Cybersecurity and cyber espionage have been in the headlines the past few years as leaked stories relating to government-sponsored activities have appeared and sabre rattling between aggrieved nations has moved to the public domain. At the same time an increased volume of distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) on banks and other institutions carried out […]
The US leads the world in card fraud, at least in part because it has lagged in the adoption of the EMV (Europay, MasterCard and Visa) Chip & PIN standard, and continues to use signatures for verification. One result, said Carolyn Balfany, group head for US product delivery at MasterCard Worldwide, during Money2020 in Las […]
Authentication, risk management, transaction integrity and cardholder verification, are the four features that define the EMV standard, specified by EMVCo, the organisation that manages the EMV standards and associated compliance processes. These are designed to protect merchants, acquirers and cardholders from fraudulent transactions. However, closing the loop on fraud altogether will be almost impossible without […]
Banks should report all cases of fraud to law enforcement agencies and punishments should be substantially increased, according to a committee of MPs.
Nationwide Building Society has brought in a new tool from ATM maker NCR designed to protect its customers against card-skimming, a type of fraud in which criminals steal customer data from ATMs.
Credit and store cards have returned to the top of the list of fraud targets, with a 28% increase in the first four months of the year – at a time when overall fraud levels fell by 16.5%.
As a rule of thumb, the fastest adopters of new technology are pornographers and criminals (two sets that often overlap). So it should come as no surprise that the latest thing to worry security specialists is 3-D printing. You’ll have seen the stories in the papers about how you can create real working guns with […]
Indonesian bank PT Bank Central Asia Tbk has adopted an anti-money laundering toolkit from specialist security firm Nice Actimize, to help the bank monitor for suspicious market activity and ensure regulatory compliance.
Information company Experian has improved its Hunter anti-fraud software to help banks and other financial services firms keep track of fraud.
In the history of bank robberies, the £30 million stolen by the Eurograbber attack in 2012 ranks as one of the all-time biggest, globally. And when you consider that this sum was stolen from more than 30,000 accounts across 30 banks in four European countries, using malware that affected both PCs and bank customers’ mobile […]
A 400% increase in malware for mobile devices masks a security scene where many of the threats are much as they have been for several years – but where the volume of attacks means that firms should think in terms of when they will be attacked rather than if they will be.
The latest bi-annual Fraud Barometer from KPMG has shown a rise in individuals committing more traditional swindles such as Ponzi schemes, cheque fraud and procurement fraud. The findings are in broad agreement with figures from CIFAS, the UK fraud monitoring service, published last week
Banks worldwide have been struggling in the battle against financial crime. Recent high-profile examples demonstrate that the rate of anti-money laundering compliance enforcement is continuing to rise.
Identity theft soared during 2012, accounting for half of all financial fraud in the UK. This drove the level of account takeover frauds up by 53% during the year, according to CIFAS, the UK Fraud Prevention Service.
While the internet has provided inumerable benefits, it has also been the field for new types of fraud and rights infringements. If the financing used by people who illegally upload or otherwise exploit content were cut off, might it be possible to combat the spread of their activities?
