“Next big financial shock will arise from a succession of cyber-attacks on financial services firms”
April 12th 2016
Only a few years ago, Cybersecurity and cyber-attacks were topics only discussed by IT professionals. However, media stories about cyber-attacks on organisations across a number of industries has brought the topic of conversation to all areas of business. Companies are becoming more reliant on their IT infrastructure to operate on a daily basis, especially financial firms. When this is disrupted and attacked, it has massive consequences on the daily operations of the firm. The more innovative and forward thinking financial firms are improving their IT security defences often with cloud based cybersecurity services.
"The next big financial shock will arise from a succession of cyber-attacks on financial services firms."
These are the words of the Chairman of the International Organisation of Securities Commission as cited by the Central Bank of Ireland's Deputy Governor, Cyril Roux.
The risks associated with an IT Security breach are too big to ignore due to the increasing amount of money that they cost businesses in terms of the direct cost of dealing with incidents as well as the brand damage. Research conducted by the Ponemon Institute showed that cyber-crime cost smaller organisations almost 5 times more per person than larger organisations. Security incidents continue to rise across the financial industry and other key industry sectors and will continue to be an important item for wealth managers and also industry regulators as the number of high-profile attacks on company’s increases.
Although more guidance and updated regulations may be coming in the future for Investment Firms, Fund Service Providers and Stockbrokers, all will face greater scrutiny regarding the safeguards they have in place related to cybersecurity.
The combination of more regulatory attention, the increasing threat to business and heightened governance expectations mean that cyber security is now firmly a senior issue and a central concern for management. The likelihood of a cyber-attack has risen to the extent that it is a question of when, not if, an organisation will experience an issue.
There are a number of steps to help protect financial services from the above.
Patches are essential to ensure important security updates are applied, without which your company could be at risk. However very few of IT Force competitors apply this server patching as it can be risky and add to service call time. Our server patching is tested first before being rolled out.
Keep your online doors closed – Financial firms should be aware of all machines that they have online. Often people add machines to corporate networks who do not understand the security threats they pose.
Encrypt Data – If data is encrypted, hackers will find a hard time to do anything with it.
Passwords - Companies can set up two-step authentication for any sensitive data, including the use of biometric data – such as fingerprints – in addition to passwords.
To be competitive in today’s business world it is vital that your IT infrastructure is operating at maximum security. To ensure this, you need to take the steps necessary to protect your IT infrastructure and network from harmful viruses, spam, spyware and other malicious software.
Contact us at info@itforce.ie for more info.