Top Cyber-Attacks on FinTech companies and 5 ways to develop a secure FinTech app

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The scale of FinTech industry and major challenge it is coping with 

Do you keep banknotes in the ripped wallet? Then why users should keep their very sensitive details in your unsecured FinTech app? 

In the last couple of years, FinTech app development technologies have reshaped the FinTech industry. Many FinTech apps with the groundbreaking features are currently available on PlayStore for users to download and to satisfy their financial needs. According to CB Insight data, FinTech startups have raised more than double amount of funding in 2018 than the previous years.  

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However, FinTech apps carry a darker side which is the nightmare for all FinTech startups and FinTech app development companies. Yes, you guessed it right. We are talking about the hackers who steal the very sensitive data of users and publish in on an untrusted environment for the sake of earning money or sometimes, just for fun. In recent years, the number of data breaching cases have skyrocketed. A study reveals that almost 446.5 million sensitive data was exposed in 2018. Following image clearly depicts that how rapidly the number of victims of data breaching is increasing for particular banking and finance industry.  

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When the data of an established bank or financial institute is hacked, they can survive because of their reserved assets. But when a FinTech startup gets affected with the cyberattack, the probability to get the second life is very low. Thus, developing an unhackable FinTech app emerges as the most primitive requirement. 

Sensing the urgency and gravity, I am going to share the basic practice you can follow to develop a very secure FinTech app. But before that, let’s suss out top cyberattacks on the banks and financial institutes. 

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Worst Cyber-Attacks of history on banks and FinTech startups 

Banks and FinTech companies have always been the cherry-picked choice of hackers. It does not only give them access to many valuable data but it helps them to satisfy their financial goal behind the hacking. 

In the past, many popular FinTech companies have suffered a lot because of the dodgy activities of hackers.  

  • Capital One 

Capital One which is the 10th largest bank in the USA, is the most recent victim of data breaching. According to many reports, hackers have stolen data of more than 10 million individuals in the USA and 5 million individuals in Canada. This stolen data contains all personal information of users as well as their credit score, credit limit, self-reported income, payment history, and balance. The company believes that hackers have stolen the data of those users who have applied for the credit cards between the years 2005 to 2019. 

  • Equifax 

Equifax is one of the largest credit reporting companies, have raised the risk to identify theft for 145.5 million users. Same as Capital One, hackers somehow managed to get access to user’s personal information as well as Social Security Numbers and Driver’s license numbers. 

  • JPMorgan Chase  

Though JPMorgan Chase is ranked sixth-largest banks in the world and they are using some heavy-duty security metrics, in 2014, data of more than 7 million small businesses and 76 million households have been compromised. The data breaching case of the JPMorgan Chase shattered the illusion that hackers could bypass the high-security standard. 

  • CheckFree 

CheckFree is associated with online bill processing, letting users pay the bills through its website. In 2009, hackers targeted its website and redirected the traffic to the malicious site. Thus, whoever entered his details assuming its a checkFree website, actually submitting his details to some other site. This way, hackers collected the data of more than 5 million users. 

  • KB Kookmin Bank  
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In 2014, an employee who was working in the Credit Bureau in South Korea copied all details of 20 million account holders. This incident raised many questions to the integrity control across the banking network.  

How to develop a secure FinTech app? 

The following list which musters the top ways to make a FinTech app unshakable is documented after actually experimenting each and everything on the FinTech apps which we have developed at my company.  

  • Data Sharing 

One of the reasons why data breaching is so common in the FinTech industry is perhaps its ‘collaboratory’ way of working: it combines many actors to complete a single process. 

For instance, when a user pays via eWallet, his all details are shared with multiple actors such as banks, credit card issuers, eWallet provider company, a merchant bank, and Google.

In such a shared environment, it turns out to be a fundamental requirement to share user’s data in a limited manner. For that, you can follow the way Google Pay is working. In Google Pay, all information of the users are converted into a dummy data set and whenever needed, Google Pay sends only that fake information to other actors.  

  • Data Ownership   

FinTech is the industry where you have to tie up with several other companies to complete your business processes seamlessly. However, this creates tension in data security like what happened with the KB Kookmin bank. 

In such a scenario, you can derive benefits from the access control. Access control restricts the usage of the data and makes sure that it never goes out of the secure environment to an unauthorized user. 

  •  Cross-platform malware contamination 

Cross-platform malware contaminant is the most overlooked security threat in the FinTech app. When one API or one module of the app gets infected, it spreads out and changes the business logic of all other modules is called cross-platform malware contamination. It is generally caused due to poor isolation between app modules and different APIs. 

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To prevent such a situation, the only thing you need to do is to isolate irrelevant app modules. To know more about app isolation, read this very detailed article: https://www.bromium.com/cybersecurity-fails-application-isolation-works/

  • Real-time risk analysis 

Your security protocol doesn’t make any kind of sense if it identifies the attack after its occurrence. So, implement the real-time risk-engine which scans each and every incoming package in real-time and alerts the system admin if real-time risk engine finds any sort of unusual pattern and behavior. 

This real-time risk engine works on AI and machine learning technology. It makes rules out of historic data that define the genuineness of every incoming package. 

  • Google Mobile encryption policy  

It is known to everyone that encrypted data is nearly impossible to breach. So, it has always been advisable to encrypt the all-important data of users. Take care with the design level and manage all encrypted keys. It will not give a single opportunity to the hackers to play around the data of your users.   

In the nutshell 

Bad things FinTech startups are coping with are making a very profitable and potential industry challenging. It reduces the number of innovation in the FinTech industry. Not only this, it confines a few razor-sharp entrepreneurs to work for the betterment of our life. Hence, it comes to be a crucial need to take away the playground of hackers, by building a strong wall. Many organizations have been working to achieve a safer online environment, but without the effort of developers’ community and FinTech app development companies, we won’t feel confident while putting our card details into a FinTech app.    

About the Author:

Vishal Virani is a Founder and CEO of Coruscate Solutions, a leading FinTech app development company. He enjoys writing about the vital role of mobile apps for different industries, custom web development, and the latest technology trends.