Social Engineering Preparedness of Online Banks: An Asia-Pacific Perspective

Social engineering is becoming the most prevalent strategy used by hackers today. With continually blossoming e-commerce activity on the web, customers adopting online banking services will become prime targets for such hackers. As such, banks have a responsibility to contain this issue in order to sustain their competitive advantage. Most banks have security policies that manifest their strategy to counter hackers and yet social engineering attacks are rampant. In this study, we analyse the security policies of online banks from 11 countries in the Asia-Pacific region (APAC) region using content analysis to assess their preparedness to handle social engineering attacks. The results show that, except for phishing, there is a dearth of information regarding new and emerging trends in such attacks. The findings also show that although the majority of security best practices include preventive measures, they were presented as ‘general tips’. Without specifying the context of an attack providing these tips can be seen as an ineffective way of presenting information.