Data security

Capital One Financial Corp. is limiting how account data flows to outside apps for managing finances, prompting a backlash from the bank’s customers who say they have been locked out of their own information.

Payments fraud from business email compromise, or BEC, occurs when scammers use phishing tricks and email to fool businesses into making fraudulent payments to perceived suppliers. Experts suggest newer factors are accelerating the trend.

HSBC is the first bank in the U.S. to deploy SoftBank's lifelike Pepper robot in a branch to help customers learn about bill pay, remote check capture and even ask the weather — but in Pepper's current iteration, it won't take deposits or payments.

Almost two-thirds of financial institutions have yet to form threat hunting teams — a growing necessity as the number of high-profile attacks rises.

Called Mezu, the P2P platform has been live for about a week and uses a location-based code to execute payments, avoiding the need to even share usernames or other identifying information to move money.

Malware operators are joining forces, installing each others’ tools on compromised computers to target a wider range of victims, and possibly also sharing the work of harvesting funds using stolen account details.

Visa, which was criticized for its vague explanation of a June 1 outage in Europe, was in the process of installing better technology, but the project was not complete at the time of the incident and won't be finished until the end of this year.

The Dixons Carphone hack shows again that merchants and payment companies need to do more to make data unattractive to thieves, according to Robert Capps, vice president of NuData Security, a Mastercard Company.

Of all the types of malicious software targeting businesses, ransomware continues to be one of the most pervasive, according to recent studies. Here's an overview of the things banks, especially small ones, are doing to stop it.