Author Archives: Graham Cluley

Many thanks to the great folks at VASCO, who are sponsoring my writing this week.

Social engineering is certainly not a new problem, but it’s a persistent one that continues to grow, and with seemingly no end in sight. Social engineering preys on a natural human tendency to trust. Hackers are expert at manipulating the human factor and exploiting trust to steal valuable information. They accomplish this by convincing their victims to divulge confidential information or participate unknowingly in fraudulent transactions.

While most financial institutions have taken significant steps to combat social engineering through user education and additional controls for their customers, they still find themselves struggling to identify new attack methods and mitigate the damage. Traditional phishing schemes are increasing in frequency and more targeted spear phishing attacks are as well. As customers migrate to additional channels, hackers are following them with threats such as voice phishing (Vishing) and SMS phishing (SMishing).

Education and enhanced security are the best defenses against hackers and social engineering attacks. To arm you for the battle, download VASCO’s “Social Engineering” eBook and you’ll discover:

• The latest social engineering attack methods
• The transaction authorization weaknesses
• How to minimize the risk of social engineering attacks
• Industry best practices and use cases

If you’re interested in exclusively sponsoring my site for a week, and reaching an IT-savvy audience that cares about computer security, you can find more information here.

Continue reading We all have a natural human tendency to trust… Be prepared! – Download VASCO’s Social Engineering eBook [Sponsor]→

Many thanks to the great folks at VASCO, who are sponsoring my writing this week.

Biometrics – specifically the use of fingerprints, iris scans and facial recognition as a means of authentication – has increasingly become an accepted part of daily life.

It’s easy, convenient, and yes, it is by all means, secure.

Banks in particular have gravitated to biometric technology such as Touch ID because it provides them with a device-based technology they may leverage to secure the mobile banking platform, and, in turn reduce their costs in deploying and supporting such services. At the same time, however, banks face the challenge of integrating this biometric technology within their security architecture while avoiding unforeseen security risks.

VASCO’s free white paper, “Biometrics in Banking”, describes how the Touch ID has been adopted as a banking authentication tool, its benefits, and the risks of deploying it incorrectly.

If you want to integrate Touch ID into your mobile banking app the right way, and learn experts’ recommendations for how financial institutions can reap the security benefits of Touch ID, then you have to read this paper.

Download your free “Biometrics in Banking” white paper right now.

If you’re interested in exclusively sponsoring my site for a week, and reaching an IT-savvy audience that cares about computer security, you can find more information here.

Continue reading Download your free copy of VASCO’s “Biometrics in Banking” guide [Sponsor]→