Crime

Jun 8, 2012

Toxic Debt or Credit Crunch: the App

I was just alerted to a new game app for the iPad and iPhone on the iTunes store. It’s called “Toxic Debt or Credit Crunch”. I downloaded the app and started playing it just to make sure it’s real. The game opened with the story detail: Planet Shred was once the finance capital of the…

May 2, 2012

There is no such thing as identity theft

So I just had a meeting with a couple of heavyweights in the cybersecurity field. These guys are bank defenders, and very good at their jobs. Their mission: to keep cyberattacks to an acceptable level. Acceptable is a few basis points of total credit, let’s say under 0.7%. Fine. But it’s getting harder every day,…

May 2, 2012

There is no such thing as identity theft

Apr 18, 2012

Why cash works and mobile internet doesn’t

The wireless world of connectivity we live in has risks, and the greatest risk has to be infection of technology. Technology viruses like trojans and man-in-the-middle look mild today, when you see the tsunami of malware that’s out there. Just a year ago, I was saying that banks should offer advice to consumer about security and…

Apr 18, 2012

Why cash works and mobile internet doesn’t

Mar 12, 2012

Anonymous: dangerous or laughable?

We have seen a great deal of activity from the activist online community called Anonymous in the last year. They first hit my radar when they closed down the websites of PayPal, Visa and MasterCard in retaliation for the arrest of Julian Assange and closure of Wikileaks funding accounts. This resulted in a co-ordinated Distributed Denial…

Mar 12, 2012

Anonymous: dangerous or laughable?

Jan 26, 2012

Who the hell needs biometrics in banking?

Biometrics isn’t discussed that much at banking conferences these days. Most of the time, when I raise the topic, there’s a groan from the banking audience. “Oh, been there, done that.” The usual view is that biometrics doesn’t work. It’s too flakey. Too many false positives and false negatives, as in it doesn’t read the…

Jun 20, 2011

Now it’s an eyePhone

Talking about iris recognition and passwords recently, I got a note from Spanish Bank, Bankinter, which has just launched an app that identifies clients through iris recognition on the phone. The way it works is that customers access their brokerage accounts by blinking into their smartphone’s camera. The app has algorithms built-in that look for eye…

Jun 16, 2011

Passwords just don’t hack it

Like everyone, I’m completely fed up with passwords and online security. It just doesn’t hack it anymore, or is that makes it easiest to hack. The system is thirty years old – I used to use passwords to get onto the company network back in the 1980s. In fact, it’s even older than that. Polybius…