cyberfraud
End-users are afraid of fraud, and fear of being tricked into losing money to cybercriminals shies the customers away from using online payment services. One tenth of users, nevertheless, still do not use any security solution to protect themselves. That’s the short summary of the recent study conducted by Kaspersky Lab and B2B International.
The very fact that people prefer to use online payments less often than they could creates a compound trouble for businesses, both those involved with processing cyberpayments and those who just use them to buy and sell products and services.
New figures
New research shows that 65% of users are concerned about online financial fraud, an increase from 62% in 2014, but a very slight one.
These concerns affect user confidence when they make financial transactions online: 54% of respondents said they worried about their vulnerability when purchasing products or making financial transactions online, compared to 49% in 2014.
The research demonstrates that worries about online financial fraud are increasingly preventing consumers from making transactions online, too. Almost half of respondents (47%) agreed that they would use online payments more often if they had reliable protection for financial transactions. A further two-fifths (43%) even admitted they have abandoned an online payment transaction in the past because it did not seem secure enough. This is an increase from 2014, when only 37% would have abandoned an online payment for the same reason.
What is encouraging is that only 11% of users still ignore the necessity of a security solution in their systems. But while this is an absolute minority, the figure is still large enough to worry about for the payment processors, including the banks. Especially if we keep in mind that cybercriminals are getting smarter, and continually find new ways to exploit other people’s credulity.
The cost of fraud
Businesses and banks lose literally billions to fraud each year. Attackers target both individual and corporate well-to-do clients of the banks, and even banks themselves are in reticle as well.
Protecting against fraudulent online transactions on the side of financial institutions is saving both their own reputation along with other people’s money. Previous studies have shown that customers sometimes take little care in the security of their own online payments, expecting the banks to provide such protection as well as reimburse them their losses.
About 28% of users of payment services do not bother to check if the site of a bank is real or fake, 34% of the users connect to public wireless networks on devices that do not have security solutions installed at all. The most typical situation is when a person needs to make an urgent online transaction – not having time to think about what type of connection is being used and how to make it more secure.
Kaspersky Lab provides security solutions for both sides – for end-users and for banks and other payment processors as well.
The Safe Money feature for Mac and Windows devices included in Kaspersky Internet Security – Multi-Device and Kaspersky Total Security – Multi-Device are checking bank websites and user devices for possible threats and ensuring a safe environment for user transactions.
For businesses Kaspersky Lab offers Kaspersky Fraud Prevention platform that proactively defends against the root causes of digital banking fraud, securing financial transactions on different user devices. A detailed information on KFP is available via this link.
