Sarv Girn is CTO for the combined Westpac and St. George banking group, which this year has aggressively pursued a mobile banking strategy. In 2008, Westpac merged with St. George, another large Australia-based bank. St. George recently released mobile banking applications for the Android and Blackberry mobile platforms in addition to its existing iPhone app -- a move largely driven by customers' changing lifestyles. Security comes down to education and how people use a mobile device, according to Girn.

"We inform customers of any anomaly and make sure customers understand what they can do to safeguard their devices, including antivirus measures," he said.

Mobile banking has an inherent risk in that the device can be easily lost, making it different from other forms of banking, but Girn says controls on newer devices are making them as secure as other enterprise devices, including notebooks. "Things like remote kill can make a mobile device more secure than a traditional device and it's an area we place a lot of importance on," he said.

Girn's pre-merger role was chief information security officer at St. George Bank and he now oversees the technology direction across the group.

As a former CISO, Girn has promoted a culture of "secure by design" for internal systems in the organization and the bank now has its own methodology and design for secure applications, including internal certifications. "Certainly, financial services demand more rigor than other industries," Girn said, adding mobile banking is on the rise because the usability of the devices has helped overcome issues of ergonomics with older mobile devices.