An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of E-banking Security Strategies in Zimbabwe: A Case Study of Zimbabwean Commercial Banks

Abstract

he introduction of e-banking has often been believed to be inhibited by security threats among other issues. Few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of e-banking security strategies in spite of its apparent impact on adoption of e-banking. This research evaluated the effectiveness of e-banking security strategies in Zimbabwe. The adoption of e-banking by commercial banks increases security risks, potentially exposing their isolated systems to open and risky environments. The increasing popularity of e-banking has attracted the attention of both legitimate and illegitimate banking practices, thereby, exposing customers to criminal activities, fraud, thefts and various other threats of similar nature. Thus, it is imperative to deliver a secure e-banking system to avoid the risk of negative effects which include clients accounts being tampered with, phishing or identity theft. In order to achieve our broad aim, a representative sample of 31 participants from 15 commercial banks completed questionnaires which were analysed using SPSS. From the analysis, it was found out that the majority of banks are using between four and five e-banking security strategies. The strategies included passwords, firewalls, encryption, virtual keyboards, pins and access codes and secure socket layers. It was therefore concluded that Zimbabwean banks are effective in offering secure e-banking services.