Wandera reports on the state of mobile security in financial services

Wandera announced findings from a new report, "State of Mobile Security in Financial Services," which includes analysis of six months of security data from 225 financial services customers with  50,000 devices collectively under management.

The report seeks to understand how financial services organisations are exposed to cyber threats in light of the increasing attacks within the industry, especially given findings from RPC that the number of data breaches reported by UK financial services firms to the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) increased by 480 per cent in 2018. Notable findings from Wandera's report include:

● There were 4.7 million events across the subset of devices analysed over the six-month period, averaging around 21,000 events per organisation, on mobile alone. 

● Financial services organisations are experiencing a higher volume of phishing attacks than their peers outside the vertical (57 per cent compared to 42 per cent cross-industry).

● Financial services are at a higher risk of man-in-the-middle attacks (36 per cent compared to 24 per cent cross-industry) perhaps due to higher than normal travel activity and public Wi-Fi usage.

● When it comes to crypto jacking, financial services employees appear to use devices more responsibly than other industries and, therefore, the overall device impact is far less (1 per cent compared to 2.65 per cent cross-industry).

● For every 20 people in financial services, there's one individual with their lock screen disabled, which has huge ramifications if the device is lost or stolen.

● Within financial services, almost 3 per cent of iOS devices have sideloaded apps compared to nearly 4 per cent of Android devices.

● More users in financial services maintain their devices with the latest operating system and security patches, likely due to well-documented policies and a firm management strategy within financial services mobile programmes.

"In the financial services industry, as in many sectors, the security of client information is the most important asset, so it's disconcerting to find mobile security still an afterthought," said Wandera VP of product strategy Michael Covington.

"Financial organisations are struggling to keep pace with increasing regulations, rapid cloud migrations and rampant BYOD adoption, among other emerging technology trends, making it crucial that industry security pros work to secure not just the devices, but also the apps installed on them and the data they access.