Securing the Future: Cyber-Risk and Resilience in Modern Online Banking Platforms

If you are stressing out whether your money is safe in this digital world, you’re not alone. We all cheered the transition to digital banking system, which made things easier for us. But, certain problems came with this transition - cyber risks.

Do you remember when banking meant driving to a branch, waiting in line, and signing things in duplicate? Well, those days are gone. Nowadays, more than half of financial transactions happen online or via mobile apps, and this trend continues to grow. While that’s super convenient, it comes with a catch - this has wide opened digital doors for cyber-threats.

Digital financial platforms like genome.eu and banks nowadays rely on cloud platforms, third-party fintech integrations, and open APIs. Yes, this is great for innovation and making the process more convenient, but it also makes a fertile ground for hackers.

Global regulators are aware of this threat and the new vulnerabilities that come from digitalization of banks, so being resilient isn’t optional - it is crucial.

Let’s dive deeper into how banks handle cyber-risks and find out how modern online banking platforms keep us safe.

What Does “Resilience” Mean in Online Banking

When we talk about “resilience” in the banking system, what do we mean? Well, we are mainly talking about the systems that keep everything in place, especially in the realm of cybersecurity. It’s all about being able to withstand, absorb, recover from, and adapt to cyber-incidents (and trust me, the banking system is a constant target).

Yes, most of the hackers are scared since there are often big corporations that take cybersecurity very seriously, and we rarely hear about a bank being hacked. However, this doesn’t mean that they are immune to such threats.

The goal here is to keep users’ data safe and avoid major disruption to customers or services.

So, to sum it up, resilience often represents the capacity for a banking infrastructure to withstand, avoid, recover, and adjust from cyber-attacks. So yes, it’s protection and prevention, but also response and recovery.

In most cases, when a hack attack happens, the damage is already done, but this doesn’t mean that banks should start waving white flags.

Let’s imagine a big bank experiences a data breach or a major outage. If they are resilient, they don’t just fix it quickly and quietly behind the scenes, but they also have plans for communication, redundancy, backups, and mechanics in place, allowing them to bounce back quickly.

At least that’s what customers expect.

The Big Threats Banks Face Today

The question is, are banks really facing threats, and what are they? Are hackers targeting banks to take away our money? Well, not really. They are looking for something more valuable. You may be thinking, “What’s more valuable than money?” - Data.

One major category that increased the risk of attack is the migration to the cloud and reliance on external services. Cloud is great, and it has opened up many new opportunities for the banking sector, but misconfigurations and weak controls have led to data breaches and service disruptions in banks.

Another risk comes from third-party vendors and fintechs. Banks partner with external platforms, just because their “system” can talk to a third-party “system” and exchange information. This makes it more convenient for you. So, you may have a budgeting software powered by AI that analyzes your spending and gives you suggestions. Well, hackers can intercept that data and target the connection between the bank and the third-party app to scrape some data.

The good news is that regulators are always pushing banks to take these things seriously. After all, these are much more than classic threats like malware, ransomware, account takeovers, or phishing attacks.

The scary fact is that as banks grow, so do those threats. Fortunately, as of now, it seems like banks already have systems that can cope with such threats.

How Banks Build Protect Themselves from Digital Threats

The big question is, what do banks do to keep their systems safe and secure? Well, it’s not like they have a one anti-hacker system. In fact, their resilience system has many layers.

One big concept is Zero Trust. The idea of “never trust, always verify.” This means that every login, every device, and service request gets checked. No more “trusted network inside the firewall” thinking.

On top of that, there’s continuous monitoring and threat detection. The system is also enhanced with AI, which detects anomalies, strange patterns, and actors moving though their system.

Additionally, banks adopt frameworks like ISO/IEC 27001 or NIST Cybersecurity Framework that guide how they identify, protect, detect, respond, and recover. They also did a lot of advancements in terms of authentication (like multi-factor or biometrics), and they seriously improved the encryption of data stored.

Lastly, every third-party app goes through serious checks before they are allowed to connect to the bank’s system.

Why This Matters to You

If you think, “this is the bank’s problem, not mine,” you have the wrong mindset. This is your problem too, because as a customer, your trust, money, and personal data are involved. So, if a bank gets hit and it goes offline, or experiences a data leak, this can also affect you.

Bank’s services can go down, you may not be able to transfer funds, but these are the less scary scenarios. Your data is most valuable to you, and if it falls in the wrong hands, thing can go south quite quickly.

Fortunately, banks are always improving their cyber-security systems and building resilience through frameworks, monitoring, and strong authentication. Things are getting more complicated for us – the users, but this is necessary in order to keep our data safe.