Encryption in the banking market

In the world of finance, data security is a serious business. Encryption enables various types of economic activities that would otherwise not be possible. The financial services industry is one hit hardest by the heightened expectations of consumers to access information, receive help, and conduct transactions anywhere and at any time via their electronic devices. By converting plaintext into ciphertext, encryption helps banks, insurance companies, actors in the credit market, corporations, venture funds, investment advisors, fund managers, consulting firms etc. protect sensitive information so only the authorized users can, with the right key, decrypt and understand the information.

It should come as no surprise that the financial industry is among the most regulated in the world. Electronic banking, a drastic change, has revolutionized the financial industry and therefore new regulations have been put in place to avoid possible fraudulent transactions. The development of cryptographic techniques has seen a lot of applications in the banking industry for the implementation of data security. Encryption of private information and data provides security in the form of a password, pin code, biometrics, digital signature, steganography, etc.

Cryptography is the study of abstracting information from undesired users of the same. Cryptography techniques have long been used in the banking industries to ensure the security of monetary transactions including the security of ATM cards, computer passwords, and electronic commerce.

Cryptography revolves around Encryption and Decryption where Encryption is a process in which plain text data is converted into an unreadable text called the ciphertext and decryption is the process of transforming data that has been rendered unreadable back to its normal form.

When in the wrong hands, personal information can be wielded as a powerful tool. One of the best ways to protect your data is to encrypt it. End-to-end encryption gives you back control and protects your data from snoopers and prying eyes. Encryption is the best working way so far to secure your data of any form of unwanted access. By taking plain text and using mathematical calculations to turn data into code it is converted into cipher text, only those who have the special key can decrypt your files. Our user friendly system enables ease of operations, guarantees the highest possible control and ensures that nobody but you can access your personal information so that no disadvantageous data breach arises. We offer business and premium subscriptions. Don’t miss out our 30 days free trial. You can read more about our offers on our pricing page.

Aside from the obvious personally identifiable information (PII) such as names, addresses, and social security numbers, the financial industry also regularly handles data that includes income, credit score, collection history, and family member PII and Non-public Personal Information (NPI).

1. Protect your network

Use a virtual private network also abbreviated as VPN, which is a secure tunnel between two or more devices. VPNs are used to protect private web traffic from snooping, interference, and censorship. PNs encrypt all the data you send over the internet Your VPN, also masks your IP address and finally some VPNs block malicious websites, ads, and trackers.

1. Protect your network

Strong passwords are the key to your digital life. Passwords are the digital keys to our networks of friends, our work colleagues, and even our banking and payment services. The most important two passwords are those for your email and social network accounts. It’s important to use entirely new and unique passwords for each account you might run, so you avoid compromising your data if one of your accounts gets hacked. To have a strong password it is extremely important not to include any personal information in your passwords. Hackers could attempt to log on to your account by guessing your password based off of personal information gained from your security questions. The shorter and less complex your password is, the quicker it can be to come up with the correct combination of characters and access your private information. A password cracker is a programme using a multitude of combinations in a very small amount of time until gaining full access to whatever your password was protecting. Use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, symbols and numbers.

And don’t forget - if in need of inspiration you can use our AxCrypt Password Generator. Based on statistical analysis of actual text, it produces strong passwords that are not nonsensical and actually possible to remember and type. You’ll get three suggestions of decreasing strength and complexity.

We have furthermore password management features available. Don’t worry about trying to remember all your different passwords anymore - we take care of that for you. Keep all your passwords and secrets safe in our cloud.

3. Ensure your Cloud Data

With our Cloud storage awareness, your files will automatically be secured in Dropbox, Google Drive etc. Our user friendly system enables ease of operations, guarantees the highest possible control and ensures that nobody but you can access your personal information so that no disadvantageous data breach arises. Moreover we offer Zero Knowledge encryption. Zero knowledge cloud encryption safeguards your privacy, in short your personal data is encrypted in the best possible way and there is no way for cloud providers nor us to identify your accreditation. You can use our Cloud encryption software by signing up to our business (for companies) or premium (for private users) subscription. Start your 30 days free trial now! Read more about our products.

The financial industry, in particular, is one of the best places to study encryption and data security because their task is so challenging, and the number and types of encryption are so varied and to just capture a few of them, if we think about simple transactions, ones that you make at a merchant or an ATM, or simple banking transactions over the counter.

Banks are facing many challenges and need to acquire encryption in so many different forms is ensuring that cards, pins and the transaction happening are secure. Various encryption algorithms are built into the communication network to prevent unauthorized transactions. Most financial institutions are using something called tokenization which will encrypt a portion of the data. The other type of encryption is when that data is in transit. Called back-end encryption, it ensures that the transit connection is encrypted until arriving to the database or server.

ATM

This is a piece of the transaction, which is very critical. From the actual pin number that was generated on that card, creating your pin, making sure that pin is always secret, different patterns are used to secure that pin at rest or when being used.

Cards

The electronic card allows a cardholder to make a payment or a purchase by electronic fund transfer. The common types of cards are credit cards and debit cards. All the data and communications are protected by cryptography, making chip and PIN cards more difficult to hack.

Banking is one of the top targets of hackers driving an increase in cybersecurity awareness within the industry. Data breaches and cyber attacks threaten data leaks and a display of information and sensitive data being exposed.

Cloud computing provides a very high level of data protection, especially for sensitive data that includes customer information.

The Wall Street Journal reported that, despite the importance and accessibility of encryption, many corporations still fail to encrypt sensitive information. Some companies by only encrypting one-third of all sensitive corporate data, leave the remaining two thirds sensitive to theft or fraud.

The challenges impeding market growth and expansion strategies tend to lead companies in the Cloud Security in the banking market. The market for cloud security solutions in the banking sector is set to grow.

There are strong data security requirements for banking. To sum up, encryption is fundamental to contemporary internet security. It is an extremely complicated subject but we are proud at AxCrypt to make the process of it simple and friendly to use for everyone.

Security, reliability and simplicity

Client’s information and company deals are also stored safe and secure from prying eyes.

Teamwork, collaboration

The exchange of a large amount of data is simple and easy. It assures the security of electronic commerce transactions over the Internet for example making it possible to transmit credit card numbers. Use master key, a feature which enables business administrators to recover files of the business members, eliminating the risk of losing access to critical files due to employees leaving or forgetting their passwords.

Cloud storage awareness and password management

The volume of data traffic has significantly increased. Information travels regularly to different network domains, as consumer banking relies on different endpoints to interact and has adopted a multi-cloud environment. Access all your documents and synchronize them on your devices while protecting your files from costly data breaches.

Data protection regulation compliant

Compliant with domestic and international regulations that companies should and must need, it bypasses breaches every time the market fluctuates, displays company’s relevant information when internal controls occur as only approved individuals have access to it and sidestep the considerable fines associated with non-compliance.

Multilingual

Multilingual support for Arabic, English, Dutch, French, German, Italian, Korean, Mandarin, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish and more to come.