Stay secure in the finance sector. Explore the latest in financial cyber security news, trends, and best practices to protect valuable assets and data.
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Background for this topic.
Finance covers the institutions, markets, and services that move, store, lend, invest, and insure money. Its distinctive assets include customer identities, account balances, payment instructions, trading positions, claims, and confidential business data. Operations depend on core banking and ledger systems, payment networks, market-data feeds, identity services, and external processors or cloud providers. Integrity and availability are especially important: an unauthorized change to beneficiary or settlement data can cause direct loss, while an outage can interrupt payments or trading and complicate time-sensitive reconciliation.
Security work therefore focuses on online banking and trading interfaces, APIs, privileged access, credentials, and third-party connections. Useful controls include phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication, least privilege, transaction signing or approval separation, encryption, tamper-evident logging, and anomaly monitoring. Privacy protections apply to personal and financial information; PCI DSS is relevant where payment-card data is handled, alongside jurisdiction-specific financial rules. Vulnerability management should prioritize internet-facing and legacy systems, while incident response needs capabilities to contain fraudulent transactions, preserve evidence, reconcile ledgers, and restore trusted service through tested backups or failover.
DDoS Attacks Primarily Target Logistics, Government and Financial EntitiesA spate of distributed denial-of-service attacks during the end-of-year holiday season disrupted operations at multiple Japanese organizations, including the country's largest airline, wireless carrier and prominent banks. The effect of the attacks has been temporary.
Ken Palla on Lessons From U.K and Australia to Reduce Fraud and ScamsThe U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's decision to file a lawsuit against Zelle is too late and too narrow to reduce scams, said Ken Palla, retired director with MUFG Bank. CFPB last month sued the operator of Zelle, as well as three banks for failing to protect consumers from fraud.
Integrity Technology Group Built Botnet for Chinese Hackers, US Treasury SaysThe Department of Treasury blacklisted Integrity Technology Group, declaring transactions with the company to be off-limits for U.S. financial institutions and persons. The effect will likely have more symbolic than actual disruptive effect.
Hackers Reportedly Target Treasury Department Offices Overseeing Economic SanctionsA Chinese hack of the U.S. Department of Treasury targeted offices tasked with overseeing economic sanctions and financial investigations, as experts warn Beijing is increasingly escalating attacks on American critical infrastructure while preparing for potential future conflict.