Lloyds Banking Group (LBG) has introduced a technology project to offer its customers enhanced protection against hackers.

Through the £500m project, the bank aims to bolster its own defences as well as its two-step verification process for customer onboarding.

The British lender claims that this will make it difficult for hackers to hack customers’ bank accounts.

The project is focused on improvements such as providing the bank’s staff at its branches with the latest technologies to speed up their service.

The lender believes that the risks of cybercrime are on the rise as more customers are banking online and via mobile apps, rather than visiting the branches.

Lloyds Bank’s latest technology project is said to be a part of its three-year strategy, the details of which will be revealed by the bank next year.

Under this strategy, the bank is expected to prioritise the sale of insurance and money management services to wealthy customers.

Last week, Lloyds Bank announced a pre-tax profit of £1bn ($1.3bn) in the third quarter on an income of £3.4bn.

The profit beat analysts’ expectations (an average of £588m) and is likely to give investors a more optimistic view of the bank’s near-term prospects.

Moreover, Lloyds Bank has asked two-thirds of its 65,000 total employees to continue working from home until at least early 2021 due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

Several other UK banks have upped their security game lately.

Last month, Standard Chartered invested in Israel-based passwordless authentication specialist for enterprises Secret Double Octopus.

In the same month, NatWest tapped Featurespace, a provider of enterprise financial crime prevention software, to protect its customers from push payments fraud.

This September, NatWest also entered into a partnership with advanced endpoint protection and remediation solutions provider Malwarebytes.