Online banking is a convenient and practical solution for all of us when it comes to doing transactions. You don’t have to waste petrol driving to the bank or waste your time queuing up – you don’t even need to leave the comforts of your home or office. However, a lot of us have also thought about the safety issue when doing online transactions – how secure are our local banks when it comes to the digital side?
A local VPN service provider, BolehVPN, has made new interesting findings about communication security of online banking services in Malaysia. An automated test was done by Qualys SSL Labs, in which a detailed analysis on configurations of a SSL-equipped web server was presented. Thankfully, most of our local banks were graded ‘A’ except for Maybank2U, the online banking service by Malaysia’s most popular bank.
According to the findings, Maybank2U was graded ‘F’ as the security is said to be obsolete and insecure. This news is rather alarming given Maybank2U’s popularity among Malaysians. It was also reported that Maybank2E’s test result was worse than Maybank2U, and ironically, Maybank2E had won an award for Best E-Commerce Bank and Best Transaction Bank.
Three other online banking services were also graded ‘F’: Affin Bank, Bank Muamalat and Bank Simpanan Nasional. RHB Malaysia did not even manage to be tested, and the report analysis contained the words, “Assessment failed: No secure protocols supported.”
Other banks in Malaysia such as CIMBClicks, Public Bank, Hong Leong Bank, UOB Malaysia, Alliance Bank, HSBC Malaysia, Standard Chartered Malaysia, Bank Islam, OCBC, and CitiBank were all graded ‘A’. AmOnline and Bank Rakyat were both graded ‘B’.
