Indian Online Finance Community – Challenges and Precautions

Security is one of the key requirements by financial customers today as they increasingly use the Internet to not only manage their financial transactions online but also to buy different financial products. Online finance community is the buzz word of the young Indians. With the increased per capita income and shortage of time, people are now preferring purchase through online mode. Swiping a credit card has become a common phenomenon. In such a scenario, banks and other financial institutions should invest in and promote the security of their online websites stand to differentiate themselves from their competitors and win more customers. The rapid growth in online phishing along with identity scams and increasing regulatory pressure has ensured that security is a critical concern among the online finance community in India.Day by day banks are exploring a variety of online security threats. The key ones among them are phishing, keyboard logging and man-in-the-middle who have emerged as serious threats over the last 18 months. The interesting part of this security story is that these threats are something that the customer must protect themselves against and requires a lot of customer education and financial literacy. When a bank realises that there is a phishing attack; there is enough possibility that some of the customers would have already been affected by this . There are a number of solutions available to prevent each of the above mentioned threats and it is important that the banks implement them as soon as possible to make the online finance community more secured.Apart from phishing, the other disruptive threats that affecting the Indian online finance community are spamming, virus infusion and Trojans. These threats have been there for a long time but cannot be ignored. The spectrum of affected areas by these threats range from identity theft of bank’s online customers to loss of transactional integrity for online deposits and withdrawals. There a number of attacks associated with Indian online finance community which require large investments and may not be justifiable with the customer base of some banks. As a matter of fact, there are many banks who are willing to compensate for the fraud losses but not picking up a solution to prevent the same.The online finance community’s need for security policy must be continuously monitored and updated as a result of newer security threats. This constant updation is required because the bank has to continuously evaluate the risks, the cost of technology solutions and even the upgradation. Then it gets all the more challenging due to a variety of technological solutions available in the market, each addressing one or the other problem but none offering a one-stop solution. A number of online banking users are unaware regarding types of threats they face online and the precautions that they must take to counter them. Hence, financial literacy is a must for the Indian online finance community. The customer education becomes a key element to prevent the manifestation of a number of risks associated with these frauds.The growth of online finance community also depends a great deal on the customer-targeted communication from the banks to alleviate the fears of all these above risks. The experienced eyes of an Internet-savvy can detect potential phishing attempts when compared with a customer comfortable with the traditional mode. The beginners or users who have started adopting online banking do not continue to use them if they are struck by a fraud or attempts of fraud. This is due to the fact that their confidence on such a channel is drastically reduced and fall back on the traditional modes of banking. Hence, to conclude, the regulatory bodies should enforce online security norms,and reward initiative and innovation from the banking and IT communities.