Industry groups partner on mobile money security standards
Two associations working on sorting out the future of mobile money are partnering to address a persistent issue in mobile financial services: security. Mobey Forum, a global bank-led industry association, announced it is working with the Trusted Computing Group's Industry Liaison Program to enhance the development of security standards in mobile financial services. The TCG is an industry association promoting trusted and secure computing standards.
"The current security standards for mobile devices lack the perspective of financial institutions and their specific needs for mobile payments and mobile banking, said Mobey Forum chairman Ron van Wezel in a statement. Van Wezel is also director of emerging payment streams at Deutsche Bank.
"The TCG is doing great work toward defining security standards in mobile financial services," van Wezel said. "The input and participation of Mobey Forum in the TCG will provide valuable contribution from the financial and banking sector in support of this work."
The new arrangement between the organizations will let Mobey Forum and the TCG share members' security requirements and use this combined knowledge to enhance the TCG's development of standards in mobile financial services, the announcement said.
The liaison is also intended to foster closer collaboration between the mobile, information and communications technologies industries and the banks and financial institutions intent on rolling out MFS to their customers.
Van Wezel said the partnership will deliver educational value for Mobey Forum members and enable direct communication between the financial sector and device manufacturers.
"Aligning their interests with the industry's efforts to create technical standards will help to accelerate deployment and encourage state-of-the-art security implementations," van Wezel said.
"One of the core objectives of the TCG relationship with Mobey Forum is to ensure that the TCG's standard specifications are not only theoretically and technically sound, but also [that they] support users' requirements and development demands of the industry adopting them," said TCG Director and Chair TCG Marketing Work Group Brian Berger. "We look forward to receiving the practical input from the banking and financial institutions represented by Mobey Forum that will enable us to meet this objective."
Mobey Forum's Security Taskforce will represent Mobey Forum in the program, imparting the views and vision of the wider association, the Forum said. It will also be able to access up-to-date TCG knowledge of current research and standards, as well as evaluate in real time the different MFS use cases developed by the TCG.
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