Banks and other financial institutions have been advised to find better ways to fight advanced attacks by cyber criminals.

The call is coming on the heels of a recent report by Juniper Research which states that fraud and the interception of online transactions statistics are exhausting that, by 2020, the value of fraudulent online transactions globally will be close to the equivalent of $25.6 billion, which is double what is at present.

Reacting to the report, Arbor Networks, the security division of NETSCOUT, said the action is necessary because of the role financial institutions play in safeguarding ‘our money’.

Territory Manager for sub-Saharan Africa, Arbor Networks, Bryan Hamman, said in a statement that if there’s one industry we should be most concerned about when it comes to cyber criminals and security, is the one that looks after our money.

Continuing Hamman said: “The financial services industry is under continual threat from cyber crooks, and the methods they use to try and infiltrate bank security systems are becoming more sophisticated every day.

The good news is that this threat can be averted, and the theft avoided, says Hamman.

He advised that banks need to consider platform solutions that provide real-time flow and packet analysis for connections – end-to-end.

According to him, “These solutions should be designed with the user in mind, allowing them to easily zoom/pivot on visual representations of new indicators and to automatically correlate network activity.”

He says built-in investigation workflows and an exceptional threat level analysis system with informed analytics will provide visibility into both past and present network activity. In addition, there are modules available that will automatically aggregate related indicators, host profiles and network connections into a single view of an advanced threat.

“South Africa had the most cyber-attacks across Africa in 2014, with losses estimated at around R50 billion,” adds Hamman.

“In a world like this, consumers want their bank’s security teams to be able to detect and connect global attack indicators to events in their own network.

“In fact, global threat indicators should be connected to the organisation’s internal traffic systems with the most relevant and dangerous threats being identified early,” he said.

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