Indian banks reeling under security concern

BANGALORE, INDIA: With over 57 per cent of banks in India not having a dedicated budget for online security, the country's banks look prone to identity theft and phishing.

While 30 per cent of banks suffered identity theft, an equal percentage experienced phishing during the last one year, according to an online survey by software products company ReadiMinds.

While ruing the fact that banks still have online security as part of their IT budget, the report – State of Online Security in Financial Institutions in India 2008 – said that 10 per cent of banks were victims of man-in-the-middle attacks during the last one year.

Over 70 per cent of banks reported to have implemented stronger security. Only 57 per cent of respondent have a formal plan to create customer awareness against online identity theft and financial frauds.

All the respondents were aware that integrating stronger user authentication, with fraud detection and risk based transaction verification is the strongest form of defense against online identity theft and financial frauds.

The survey respondents represented a cross section of India's top 40 banks.