Here at Consult Hyperion, we are often involved in design implementation and testing of secure systems on devices such as smart cards and mobile phones for payments, banking and other applications where security is critical.
At Consult Hyperion we frequently discuss the implications of financial crime migrating online. You’re less likely to be mugged at the cashpoint but the online environment is of course open to a wider range of attackers, often well hidden, and operating in diverse geographies. Personally, I have little patience with those who cite the ‘Four Horsemen of the Information Apocalypse’: terrorists, drug dealers, kidnappers and child pornographers. It is, therefore, particularly refreshing to see a genuinely practical approach to child protection being promoted by TrustElevate, drawing on opinions expressed by young people themselves.
Have you noticed that some of the best attended events at conferences recently are the investment panels, populated by canny investors talking about where they are currently placing their funds? And so this was the case with Consult Hyperion’s recent webinar The Role of Due Diligence in Investment Cycles, featuring Jonathan Luff Co-Founder of CyLon, Europe’s leading investor in pre-seed and seed stage cyber and security technology startups. Howard Hall, Managing Director of Consult Hyperion North America, and Gary Munro, Technical Director Consult Hyperion and Dave Birch our Global Ambassador, who moderated the discussion.
For the third year running, my colleague Gary Munro facilitated a thought-provoking debate around the use of mobile phones and tablets as contactless payment terminals during last week’s virtual Merchant Payments Ecosystem (MPE) conference. For the last three years, Gary and his panellists have tracked the progress of the SoftPOS technology and standards. The three key messages that I took away from this year’s conversation were that:
For most of us 2020 isn’t going to be a year to linger fondly in the memory. It’s been a monumental slog in the face of grim news and little cheer but from a payments perspective we’ve seen an unsurprising surge in interest in all things payment related.
People have moved from cash to electronic payments – contactless transaction numbers have soared. People moved from face to face purchases to online. And, there’s been a ton of stress on payment systems as people have demanded refunds for holidays and flights they couldn’t take due to various travel restrictions. It’s been a year like never before.
We can expect this to be exacerbated over what will likely be an extended Black Friday and Christmas holiday shopping period. Online payments are expected to grow even though economies are in recession. For us in Europe it’s the last hurrah before PSD2 requirements on strong customer authentication come into force on January 1st. Merchants and payment companies will be well staffed on News Year Eve as they wait and see how the systems will hold up, and what sort of abandonment figures they’ll see as puzzled customers are presented with confusing authentication screens. We can probably expect a flood of concerned calls about phishing which are actually Strong Customer Authentication requests.
At Consult Hyperion we spend a lot of our time looking into payments processing platforms for our clients. Over recent months we’ve delivered;
It’s fair to say we have a comprehensive understanding of payments processing. The products and solutions offered by Fintechs, Banks, Neobanks etc. rely on the capabilities of the underlying payments platform(s).
When consumers install software on their devices, they often perform some sort of risk evaluation, even if they don’t consciously realise it. They might consider who provides the software, whether it is from an app-store, what social media says, and whether they have seen any reviews. But what if once a piece of software had been installed, the goalposts moved, and something that was a genuine software tool at the time of installation turned into a piece of malware overnight.
This is what happened to approximately 300,000 active users of Chrome ad blocking extension Nano Adblocker. You see, at the beginning of October, the developer of Nano Adblocker sold it to another developer who promptly deployed malware into it that issued likes to hundreds of Instagram posts without user interaction. There is some suspicion that it may have also been uploading session cookies.
What did you think of the US election? I don’t mean the candidates and the outcome. What did you think of the election process? Should it be possible for national elections of this type to be done online? Last week the IET published a paper on internet voting in the UK, led by our good friend at the University of Surrey, Professor Steve Schneider. It’s well worth a read. As the paper explains, internet voting for statutory political elections is a uniquely challenging problem. Firstly voting systems have exacting requirements and secondly, the stakes are high with the threat of state level interference.
Banks are facing massive disruption and change from many directions. The rise of app-only banks has made the need for traditional banks to have compelling app services an imperative. Banks have of course been building mobile apps for several years. If not already, they will soon be the most important channel for engaging with and serving customers. However, mobile banking apps will also become the primary focus of hackers, intent on getting access to other people’s information and money.
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