People are the cause of most breaches in banking security, a report shows.

Employees and customers are the key sources of security breaches, according to a survey of financial services companies by business advisory firm Deloitte.

Around 91 percent of those questioned said they are concerned about risks to security arising from within their organisations.

Almost a third of respondents said they had suffered security breaches by employees, either through misconduct or error.

Some 65 percent of senior information technology executives at many of the top 100 global financial services organisations also reported external security breaches.

The survey found that customers are the cause of breaches in security due to poor awareness and failing to have anti-virus protection on their computers.

Many problems centre on viruses and worms, e-mail attacks, such as spam, and attacks focused directly on the customer, such as identity theft, Deloitte said.

But, despite financial services firms being aware of a rising threat to security, less than two thirds have an information security strategy in place.

Only one-third said their workers are competent to respond to security needs and 22 percent said they had not provided employee security training over the past year.

Mike Maddison, UK head of security and privacy services at Deloitte, said: You can have the best technical systems in place, but they are unlikely to operate effectively unless you educate people on their obligations and how to fulfil them.

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