In a race with fintechs to provide their customers with real-time service, banking players are seeing increased pressure on their IT systems, particularly during the containment period. In recent weeks, the number of incidents reported to the authorities has multiplied. How can these breakdowns be contained? A new challenge for banks.
30% growth in use of banking IT networks
As the government announced at the start of the lockdown, banks are operators of vital importance, and must ensure continuity of service to maintain economic and social ties.
During this period, "banks' IT networks experienced an average growth in usage of 30%", explains Stéphane Busse, partner specializing in IT strategies in financial services at Bain & Company, in the columns of the French newspaper Les Echos. Banking establishments have had to adapt by welcoming their customers by appointment, reducing their opening hours and ensuring the partial presence of their teams. The current crisis is prompting banks to accelerate their digital transformation. They are now faced with structural problems: vulnerability to cyber-attacks, models incompatible with teleworking, a system that resists open banking...
Fear of the emergence of new threats
The introduction of teleworking within major banking networks and the growing use of remote banking have led to an increase in cyber threats. A senior official of the European Central Bank (ECB) stated as much last October. Among these attacks is ransomware, a virus that encrypts computer data, rendering it incomprehensible and unusable by the owner. To recover this data, the hackers then demand payment of a ransom.
In July 2020, the insurer MMA fell victim to this type of attack. Its activities were severely disrupted for around ten days. The consequence for customers was longer processing times, but no data leakage. More recently, the bank LCL experienced a major technical problem. Numerous customers were able to access the bank accounts of other users by logging in with their own identifiers. In a press release, however, the bank asserts that this was not a cyber attack, but a computer bug.
Computer breakdowns, cyber attacks: is the banking sector really prepared?
Banks and insurers are not the most targeted by cyber-attacks, as SMEs have been in the firing line during the containment period. Even if these players are developing more and more tools to prevent these risks, several avenues for improvement can be identified. One of them, suggested by Alessandro Roccati, co-author of a Moody's study on the subject, would be to place certain data in the clouds of GAFAMs, which are reputed to have better cybersecurity performance. Another possible solution would be to strengthen cooperation between banks by allocating more resources to sharing information on attacks suffered, and organizing attack simulations.
We need to take stock of the health crisis to enable banks to accelerate their involvement in the era of modernization, in complete safety and by integrating new customer uses.