Secure opinions
[Dave Birch] At the Mobile Banking Security conference in Vienna — which was very good, by the way — I gave a short introductory talk explaining to the delegates that I felt that security needed to improve at all levels to push the development of the sector: the regulatory level, the business level and the technology level. In his talk, however, Ivan Mortimer-Schutts of BNP Paribas asked a question that I didn’t, and which should frame some of the debate about security at all of these levels: is there a tradeoff between security and innovation in the mobile space and, if there is, is that tradeoff currently positioned correctly. You can see what he means: if we demand complete security at every level, aren’t we going to hold back innovation and stifle competition? And if we are, is that good or bad? After all, you might reasonably argue that some parts of the banking world might have benefited from substantially less innovation over recent times.
