Banking Trojans Are Top Financial Services Threat

Banking Trojans represent the biggest potential threat to financial institutions and their customers, and are on the rise, according to new research from Blueliv.

The Spanish threat intelligence firm released data from a recent Twitter poll of over 11,000 users and its newly launched report for the banking sector, Follow the Money.

Nearly a third (31%) of respondents claimed banking Trojans were the biggest threat to financial services firms, followed by mobile malware (28%), a category also increasingly comprised of Trojans designed to access customer accounts.

The bad news is that activity appears to be escalating in this area: Blueliv’s report revealed the firm tracked a three-digit uptick in Trickbot (283%) and Dridex (130%) detections over Q2 and Q3 this year.

The botnets are known to distribute banking Trojans as well as other malware targeting financial services.

The poll also revealed that skills shortages (28%) are the biggest challenge facing banks’ IT security teams as they try to build out programs.

Recent data from (ISC)2 revealed that global skills shortages now exceed four million. In Europe the crisis is particularly acute: shortages have soared by 100% over the past year to reach 291,000.

The poll also highlighted the challenges associated with high volumes of threats and alerts (26%) and poor visibility into threats (20%), which it is claimed are hampering banking cybersecurity teams as they struggle to combat attacks.

“Because they are such high-value targets for cy ..

Support the originator by clicking the read the rest link below.