64% of Leading APAC Bankers Feel Unprepared for a Cyberattack

As incidents of cybercrime continue to make headlines across the globe, financial institutions are giving more attention to cybersecurity, but a new survey by FICO suggests that APAC banks may be lagging. In a survey conducted at FICO’s Asia Pacific CRO Forum, 64% of senior bank executives from the region said they feel unprepared for cyber-attacks today, despite cybersecurity being a clear priority for them.

The survey showed uncertainty from bankers about their institution’s preparedness, with 55% of senior APAC bank executives were unsure if their organization currently ran regular audits of data and networks to check if the company had suffered data loss.

An additional 58% of respondents said they had not heard of a predictive analytics alternative to traditional rules-based SIEMs (security information and event management).

However, awareness appears to be rising with 73% of respondents said their CEO/ company board had prioritized a review of cybersecurity in the last 3-6 months.

The survey was conducted at the 2015 FICO Asia Pacific CRO Forum, held earlier this year in Bangkok, Thailand. A total of 34 senior risk officers and banking executives representing 23 financial institutions across the region participated.

Dan McConaghy, President of FICO Asia Pacific, said, “For many banks, cybersecurity is a shared domain of the IT and Fraud departments. In order to effectively combat ever-evolving cybercriminals, it is necessary for financial institutions in Asia Pacific to connect fraud and cyber information, systems and investigations. This holistic approach is needed to
limit damages to customers, systems and the bank’s reputation.”

FICO has leveraged extensive IP assets from its banking technology, including streaming analytics and anomaly detection techniques used within its market-leading FICO® Falcon® Fraud Manager software, for the creation of an analytics-driven cyber security solution that is highly differentiated from current industry offerings and complementary to existing infrastructures and investments.