Staff security breaches highlighted

Nearly one in three financial services institutions have suffered a security breach by their staff during the past year, a report showed.

These breaches occurred both through intentional misconduct by employees as well as by accident, according to business advisory firm Deloitte.

The group said 91% of financial services groups were concerned about the risk of internal security breaches, but despite identifying staff errors as being a problem, 22% admitted they had not provided any employee security training during the past 12 months.

Nearly two-thirds of firms said they had suffered an external security breach, with banks most likely to be hit by virus and worms in their computer systems, email attacks or direct attacks on their customers.

The report said customers continued to be the "target of choice" for fraudsters, through identity theft as well as phishing attacks under which people are tricked into giving their account details through a bogus email pretending to be from their bank.

The report said: "Customers are seen as a direct route to financial gain with banks facing a continued battle against the growing sophistication of attacks via identity theft."

Nearly all of the 169 financial groups questioned said they had increased their security budgets, but 35% still thought investment was lagging behind their business needs.

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