For the second time in three years, hackers have installed malware on POS systems at US discount chain Kmart and stolen customer credit card data.

Financial fraud losses across payment cards, remote banking and cheques totalled £768.8 million in 2016, an increase of 2 per cent on the previous year, figures from Financial Fraud Action UK show.

Imperva, Inc. (NASDAQ: IMPV), committed to protecting business-critical data and applications in the cloud and on-premises, today announced the results of a survey of 310 IT security professionals taken at the Infosecurity Europe trade show. The survey found that when it comes to insider threats, over half (58 percent) of the IT security professionals were deeply concerned not primarily about malicious users, but about careless users who unwittingly put their organization’s data at risk.

In the Nordic region, both businesses and consumers have inadequate IT security. Danske Bank is now attempting to do something about this with its “Keep it safe” project, which is intended to improve IT security in the region by means of concrete advice and tests.

British financial services firms expect to increase IT spending at a healthy rate in the near future, according to a CBI/PwC survey which also shows that combatting cybercrime is a growing imperative for the industry. After a tough, Brexit-tinged 2016, the survey of 98 firms shows that sentiment in the financial services sector has stabilised in the first quarter of 2017.

Britain’s SMEs are shifting the billions spent each year on hiring traditional experts, such as legal and procurement consultants, to leverage the skills required to survive in an increasingly digital world, including those for cybersecurity and new payments technology.

Wonga, a prominent UK payday loan firm, has warned 270,000 of its customers that their accounts may be at risk following a data breach.
The company reportedly discovered the breach last week but only realised that customers' account details were at risk on Friday 7th and then began notifying them the following day. More than 245,000 UK customers have been notified in addition to 25,000 in Poland.

Overcoming security concerns, the majority of financial services firms in the US and Asia Pacific have embraced cloud technology, won over by the potential for massive cost savings, according to research from IDC Financial Insights.

Several Ukrainian banks are understood to have been affected by what appears to be a coordinated ransomware cyberattack targeting firms around the world. The Ukrainian central banks says that a number of banks in the country are "having difficulties with client services", while media reports say that the Kiev metro system is not accepting card payments.

American online brokerage Scottrade says a mistake by third party vendor Genpact resulted in the sensitive information of around 20,000 customers being left exposed.
BPO outfit Genpact uploaded a dataset containing commercial loan application information from a B2B unit within Scottrade Bank to one of its cloud servers that did not have all the security protocols in place.