Like schoolyard bullies, cyberbullies scan the financial marketplace looking for weakness to exploit—and they may have found it in smartphone and tablet applications.
To be sure, these applications are among the most susceptible to the nefarious designs of cyberbullies. Borrowers and bankers are being targeted—and the risks continue to increase.
That’s because many banks are developing applications to support banking services, mortgage lending, and servicing among them. They are exposed to malware threats for those devices and those risks can be expected to get worse until more is done to counter these deceptive, criminal practices.
Many banks, including Chase, have developed applications that branch employees are extremely proud to demonstrate for clients.
They are easy to use, and employees will spend time to teach the use of the application, and they follow-up with calls, a nice touch. But there often is little time spent on discussing the risk from cyberbullies or how the bank and the borrower can protect against them. Or, what borrowers, for their part, can do to protect against malware insurgents.
Teaching borrowers how to defend themselves may well be outside a financial institutions’ focus, or they may fear that advising clients on security steps may open them up to lawsuits. That, no doubt, is a legitimate concern.
But such advice does seem preferable to the damage done to corporate reputations when a cyberbully has infiltrated clients’ mobile devices.
Also, when a client has been trained to protect himself, even if he is victimized, at least he knows the bank made an effort to prevent, or at least protect, the borrower from the attack.
There is little question that when borrowers have been victimized lenders will have to answer for that and pay a price in a diminished brand, dinged reputations, and client defections. Taking steps to educate borrowers is, therefore, in their best interest.
The problem will likely get worse as more borrowers use these applications—especially if lenders and borrowers do not begin to heed the warning signs and take steps to protect their data and finances from hackers.
Moreover, threats most commonly associated with the desktop have migrated to smartphones and tablet users.
Cybercriminals, or more accurately termed cybervultures, see an opportunity where borrowers are vulnerable, and they are moving in to extract their pound of fresh.
Compounding the problem and the risks are on-the-go borrowers that are migrating transactions to smartphones and tablets, to save time.
They pursue that approach, even though the protections against malware are less effective and comprehensive then those used to defend desktop computers.
Across the banking industry, security for mobile applications delivers less protection than is needed. But unlike desktop platforms, most don’t take steps—or at least effective ones—to protect these devices against malware assaults.
As a result, the types of risks that lenders faced on desktops have migrated to tablets and smartphones. Their criminal activities focus on netting unsuspecting smartphone and tablet users.
And the situation seems destined to get worse before it improves.
To be sure, some estimate that security concerns increase 400% percent each year, treacherous behavior is growing, and the malware in circulation is becoming more complex, more difficult to detect.
In addition, mobile is a newer marketplace—and lags the rest of the industry, well behind where desktop defenses stood some years in the past. That, unfortunately, makes it an ideal environment for cybercriminals to target and they are.
Matt Strickberger is the managing partner of OnPoint PR and Consulting LLC, a public relations firm that represents lenders, servicers, technology companies and others. He was editor of Mortgage Technology magazine from 1997-2000. If you have comments or suggestions for future columns, email him at mstrickberger@onpoint-pr.com.
