93 percent of financial institutions have declared they see online fraud prevention as a high priority, a recent study indicates.

According to ThreatMetrix 2012 State of Cybercrime survey, conducted by Info-Tech Research Group, a provider of information technology research and analysis, although they pay attention to cybersecurity strategies, the majority of respondents only have baseline IT security tools in place, with the top five tools including internal firewall, gateway anti-virus/malware, gateway firewall, intrusion detection/prevention and security management systems.

Andreas Baumhof, chief technology officer, ThreatMetrix, cited by online media outlet digitaljournal.com, declares that financial institutions are a prime target for cybercriminals and baseline cybersecurity is not effective enough.

The same source mentions that by 2014 all financial service organizations will implement IT security systems because of regulations put forward by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC). In 2011, the FFIEC regulated financial institutions to implement a layered security approach and identified two key techniques for financial institutions to maintain effective fraud controls – complex device identification and the ability to detect emerging malware threats.

Results also point out that only 22 percent of financial institutions have made significant changes to IT security systems and policies following an attack, and 23 percent have mentioned that the organization continued operations as normal.

The study is based on a sample of business managers and IT executives within retail and financial services organizations, who were questioned about their level of cybersecurity planning and fraud prevention solutions.