Cybercrime is digital banking’s greatest threat, bankers say

Banks and credit unions continue to identify cybersecurity threats and fraud as the greatest challenges to their digital banking strategy, according to new research by American Banker.

In the survey conducted in March and April, nearly 90% of the 200 banking professionals surveyed said cybersecurity threats are a “moderate” or “significant” challenge to their institutions’ digital banking strategies, more than integrating legacy systems with new digital technologies (86%) and retaining and attracting skilled talent (77%).

As such, bankers named security-related functions as two of the top three technologies for enabling digital banking, with 55% saying enhanced security and fraud mitigation were vital to their goals and 50% saying digital identity verification is critical. That far outpaced the importance rankings of many other digital services, including virtual assistants or chatbots (30%) and rapid application development (21%).