Banks vulnerable to fake data, Accenture report reveals

Accenture surveyed 800 IT banking professionals across 25 countries to identify key issues and priorities for technology investments in the financial sector. Of those surveyed 94% said they are confident in the integrity of the sources of their data, yet around 50% of the bankers admitted they are not doing enough to validate and ensure data quality.

84% of banking professionals surveyed said they are increasingly using data for critical and automated decision making, however 78% believe these automated systems create new risks such as fake data, external data manipulation.

Whilst banks have always held large volumes of confidential data, the report found that they are increasingly adding data from external, unstructured sources. Only 11% trust their data is reliable, but do not validate it. 16% said they try to valid the data, however are not sure of its quality and 24% do validate the data but recognise that they need to do more to ensure its quality.

The majority of respondents were C-level executives and directors at companies with annual revenues of at least USD 500 million, with most having annual revenues greater than USD 6 billion, according to Information Age. As one of the themes of this report is Artificial Intelligence, 79% of those surveyed believe they will see AI working alongside humans as collaborators and trusted advisors by 2020. However, concerns were flagged surrounding AI technology advances and ethical standards.