The defense activity of the Banking World against computer fraud is growing more and more: in 2019 the banks operating in Italy invested over 500 million euros to combat this criminal phenomenon, including through staff training initiatives, customer awareness campaigns and a '' careful and continuous monitoring, reconciling protection, confidentiality and security with the customer's need to make digital transactions quickly and easily.
From the study by ABI Lab (the research and innovation center for the Bank promoted by ABI), it emerges that most of the companies analyzed indicated an increase in investments for the protection of remote channels used by customers by 2020: Expenditure on IT security compared to the total IT budget increased from 7% in 2019 to 12% for 2020.
The IT security budget is divided between interventions to increase the security levels of services (31%), interventions for the evolution of the service offered to customers, also from a business perspective (30%) and interventions for compliance with regulations safety (39%).
In addition, to better meet the security needs of their customers, banks operating in Italy have promoted inter-sectoral collaborations, such as CERTFin - CERT Finanziario Italiano (Computer Emergency Response Team) - the public-private cooperative initiative directed by ABI and the Bank of Italy aimed at increasing the cyber risk management capacity of banking and financial operators.
Furthermore, the ABI, with the support of CERTFin, monitored the evolution of cyber attacks targeting the banking sector and home banking customers, particularly in the last two months of the COVID crisis. On the one hand, a series of initiatives were launched aimed at supporting financial sector operators and detecting new possible threats and organized seminars and meetings, remotely, to provide information and technological insights on recently detected phenomena, with particular reference to phishing campaigns and business continuity issues. On the other hand, it was found that the banks have activated awareness campaigns aimed at employees precisely to call attention to the measures to be taken when working at home.
Cyber security, however, also passes through the collaboration of bank customers. In fact, to operate online in a comfortable and safe way, it is important to follow some simple rules:
- periodically change the password of email, social networks, internet banking and sites for online purchases;
- open emails only from known addresses;
- access the Internet only from your computer;
- install or update the antivirus;
- contain the dissemination of personal information online;
- use different passwords for different sites.