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 percent of senior bank executives from the region said they feel unprepared for cyber-attacks today, despite cybersecurity being a clear priority for them.

According to a 2014 PwC report, cybercrime is the second most prevalent economic crime faced by financial institutions and 36% of people in financial services expect to experience cybercrime in 2015.

FICO’s survey shows that while cybersecurity has become a top priority for leadership, APAC banks may not be up-to-date on the latest technology. 58 percent of respondents in the FICO survey said they had not heard of a predictive analytics alternative to traditional rules-based SIEMs.

According to FICO’s survey, only 41 percent of APAC banks have a cyber-incident response capability in place. 34 percent of respondents indicated that they didn’t have any such capability or they were still considering putting one in place. A final 22 percent were currently developing their response capability.

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.