Online banking service still faces many threats

Online banking service still faces many threats and needs the public to raise their security awareness to protect their interests, said an insider from the banking system.

Guo Hongcheng, general manager of the Security Department at the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China in Beijing, said there are four major threats to online banking service, namely information leaks, online malware, phishing sites and underground industrial chains.

"We started security work in 2014; at the beginning, our rivals were not that difficult to cope with," said Guo, who has been working in security for more than two decades. "Now we are facing more hacker groups, they even forged an industrial chain with a profit model."

Guo said fighting such organized attacks needs legal support from the national level, as well as joint efforts with other banks and public awareness of cyber security.

"Now the awareness of security is the weakest point during the process," said Guo. "Banks have provided many ways to make sure that clients' accounts would not be logged in by hackers. However, compared with this, I think the awareness of security should be the first hurdle to leap against online financial fraud and information leaking."

With the fast development of Internet technology and popularity of mobile devices, banks' financial business has been shifting from offline counters to online windows or mobile apps. More than 200 people use online banking services, including online transactions, financial products and online payment.

Take ICBC for example, where more than 70 percent of its banking business has been replaced by online services. And this rate is expected to surpass 80 percent in 2016.

The Cyberspace Administration of China kicked off the second China Cybersecurity Week on June 1, aiming at helping the public better understand Internet security risks and enhance their capability to protect themselves.

According to a Chinese netizens' cybersecurity awareness report released this week, 81 percent of netizens seldom change their passwords, 76 percent use the same password for multiple online accounts and 414 percent use birthday and phone numbers as their passwords. In addition, about 16 percent use the most common passwords such as, "123456" or "abcabc".