The development of digital banking and fintech (financial technology) during the year of the pandemic was very relevant, but these companies face more and more cyberattacks that undermine the trust of users and, therefore, damage the purpose of inclusion financial seeking.
“The pandemic accelerated and pushed digital wallet and payment initiatives,” said Iván Marchant, VP for Colombia, Mexico, Peru and Central America, who exemplified the situation with initiatives such as Konfio or Kueski, which had increases of 6% and 3%. %, respectively, or traditional banks, such as Citibanamex, Santander and Scotiabank, which grew above 5%.
However, this development was accompanied by complexities, derived from lags in digital infrastructure and cybersecurity, warned Pedro Adalberto González, director of financial services evaluation at Banco de México (Banxico), during a conference on fintech in Mexico, Latin America and the Caribbean, where he stressed that the use of digital channels can contribute only if the risks involved in their implementation are addressed.
And the fact is that the materialization of these risks, explained the specialist, can generate damage at three levels to the institutions. On the one hand, there are disruptions in the services, which causes the services to stop being available.
Furthermore, “there is an impact on the integrity, confidentiality and availability of the information managed by the institution, including that of its clients; as well as economic losses for the organizations or their users ”, he said.
According to Gerardo Obregón, founder of Prestadero, a fintech that recently obtained authorization from the National Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV), “the issue of cyber attacks will always be present,” he accepted, although he also limited that those that operate under the so-called Fintech Law are better positioned in this regard.
“There are several points in the legislation that address this issue, from preventive matters,” explained Obregón, “how to perform penetration tests on your platform, to ensuring that the continuity plans are robust, so that in the event of an attack , the restoration of systems is done without major interruptions ”.
Likewise, he pointed out that users must have a financial education that allows them to make a more responsible use of the digital tools of the sector, in order to achieve the purpose of inclusion.
On the other hand, one of the sectors that has managed to overcome the effects related to cybersecurity is that of small and medium-sized companies (SMEs), as a report by the firm specialized in cybersecurity, Kaspersky, details that 70% of devices used in businesses in the region have security software installed and of these, 96% are protected with paid licenses.
In addition, companies have also increased their IT protection budgets, going from investing $ 114,000 in 2019 to $ 250,000 in 2020, due to the fact that at some point they were victims of a vulnerability (ransomware, malware or targeted attacks) and they do not want to let that history repeat itself.
These incidents, the company detailed, caused 36% of SMEs to pay compensation to clients, 32% to solve fines or penalties, 31% to lose business partners and 29% to face problems finding new users.
According to Claudio Martinelli, general director for Latin America at Kaspersky, “Latin American SMEs are increasingly aware of the importance of cybersecurity and we see that, despite the fact that many companies have had adverse economic effects as a consequence of the pandemic, they are clear which is not an expense, but an investment ”.
