Archive for category: finance

Make Sure You’re Prepared For Cyberattacks

Picture this: Your bank’s network slows to an uncharacteristic crawl, affecting both processing and productivity. Customers begin to lose their patience — and they aren’t too shy to let you know. Your IT team investigates and comes back with grim news: Your network is under attack.

What do you do?

If you can’t immediately answer this question, you’ve got a very big problem. Preparation is the key to winning any battle: Along with playing cyber wargames, running cyberattack simulations with your staff is critical to staying prepared.

Cyberattack Simulations For Banks

The following steps should be a part of every bank’s cybersecurity training and preparation:

1. Identify your strengths and weaknesses.

Though it’s intuitive — and necessary — to identify liabilities, it’s equally important to recognize the strengths of your security systems and your staff’s abilities. You may uncover unknown assets that can bolster the weaker areas — and develop strategies that play to those strengths.

2. Improve response time through training.

Train your whole team — not just IT personnel. The more knowledge each employee has about the telltale signs of a cyberattack, the more quickly they’ll be identified and contained. While practicing your responses, determine responsibilities; an incident response team works like a well-oiled machine when everyone knows their role.

3. Plan ahead for expenses and external assistance.

Who will you call if an attack exceeds your cybersecurity team’s skill set or bandwidth? How much do those services cost? Do your research ahead of time and keep the information readily available should you need it at a moment’s notice.

4. Identify internal risks and raise awareness.

Non-compliance with cybersecurity best practices puts your customers’ information at risk — and it could also cost you to mitigate the damage should an attacker successfully breach your customer data. Consider activities that make it easy for a malicious actor to get in, like using personal logins or unauthorized accessories on company devices. Make sure your employees all know what to do, as well as what not to do, and why.

5. Hope for the best; plan for the worst-case scenario.

Consider the varying degrees of attacks your bank might endure and the most effective response to each. Create an incident response and plan for the worst-case scenarios. Then, brainstorm how outcomes might be even worse than that.

6. Prepare your team with drills.

Test your knowledge with scenarios (more below), do your research, and work with your IT team to establish your incident response plans — and then drill! Practice these role-plays regularly — and continue to update information as the cybersecurity landscape evolves.

Cybercriminals will use all resources and assets at their disposal to break into your systems and networks. Get creative while evaluating your defenses and ask yourself: What other angles could a cybercriminal take to leverage vulnerabilities and gain unauthorized access to your bank’s systems and networks? Think like the enemy as you practice and prepare — and don’t stop until you find new ways to breach your defenses. You need to remain several steps ahead of your enemy to defend your business in today’s cyber minefield.

Knowing how you should respond to a cyberattack isn’t enough these days: It takes practice and research to establish an efficient and effective response. Take your security into your own hands and see how well you deal with the following scenarios. You may be surprised by the invisible tripwires and potholes that can lead to cybersecurity incidents that cost your bank millions of dollars — and damage your reputation.

Cyberattack Simulation Exercises

Introduce the scenarios below, and ask your team the following questions:

• What are the first steps you must take to minimize damage?

• Which authorities and individuals will you contact — and in what order?

• How will you assess the damage?

• How will you manage the fallout?

• How can you prevent these scenarios from happening in the first place?

Scenario 1: Leave your personal logins at the door.

Bob left his phone in the car, but he needed to double-check the time of his doctor’s appointment, so he logged into his personal email from a work computer. The next day he logged in and found odd extensions on his files — and he was unable to open them. It turns out that cybercriminals used a MITM (man in the middle) attack to have Bob’s personal email credentials redirected. When Bob lets your tech team know about his problems, he mentions that he uses the same password for everything, including his login credentials at your company. In other words, the attacker can now access everything Bob had access to — and since Bob is a Senior Manager, he has access to some of your most sensitive data.

Scenario 2: The problem with home devices.

George received a call from his daughter’s preschool that she had a cough and a fever, so he had to leave work early to pick her up. He wanted to continue working on his project from home, so he made copies of his files on a flash drive to take with him. He completed his tasks on his personal computer at home, updated the files on the flash drive, and brought the drive into work the next day. Unfortunately, his home computer had been infected with malware, and now his work computer is compromised.

Scenario 3: It’s not you. It’s them.

Your bank’s Human Resources department uses a cloud-based online video platform to stream training videos for new hires. You just heard on the news that this provider was recently hacked, and malicious actors formjacked files that the HR department had been using.

Scenario 4: One simple mistake.

Diane followed every security protocol when she installed Outlook on her phone to access her work email at home. Like many people, she often purchases from large online retailers and frequently receives notifications in her personal email. One such notification popped up on her screen (apparently, there was an issue with a recent order). She opened the email from her lock screen and clicked on the link provided. Sadly, this was a phishing email sent to her work email. Her phone became infected with malware, which compromised her work email.

Cryptocurrency Comes With a Whole New Headache for Banks

Cryptocurrency has risen from financial outlier to disruptor with trillions of dollars at stake. Speculation about its legitimacy and educated guesses on its longevity abound. At first, it sounded like a passing fad. But now, even banks are beginning to embrace it, despite its volatility. And it’s not just its volatile nature you should worry about these days. One of the biggest headaches — a crypto virus CISOs should keep a keen eye on — is cryptojacking.

What Is Cryptocurrency, Exactly?

You’ve probably already heard of the most famous cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Monero, Ethereum. However, the crypto market has grown exponentially since 2009, when it first hit the digital ether. There are now over 9,000 currencies to date. Banks are rushing to meet customer demand for digital shelving space to hold their crypto — but there’s still miles of legal tape to dispense before banks can plunge in.

Whatever gimmicky name has been slapped on it, all cryptocurrencies are virtual currencies secured by cryptography. In theory, this method of securing crypto makes these currencies impossible to counterfeit or double-spend. Think of it as a serial number system like the ones on dollar bills; only these markers have been etched into the currencies’ codes.

One glaring issue with cryptocurrencies — or huge benefit, depending on who you’re talking to — is that a central authority does not generally issue them. In other words, they aren’t managed by any official government, nor are they afforded the kind of tracking and other protections placed on federal currencies.

Instead, these currencies rely on blockchains, which are updated every time a transaction is made. These transactions are processed and validated by “miners,” who essentially verify “blocks” in the crypto ledger. Miners are often rewarded in cryptocurrency for their work.

What is Cryptojacking?

Cryptojacking is the unauthorized use of other people’s devices and resources to mine for cryptocurrency. Motivated to save money and make a profit, cybercriminals steal resources like electricity and high-powered computing hardware from unsuspecting victims by secretly hijacking their devices.

Imagine there’s a thief who steals an electric car each night when the owner is fast asleep — and then makes a healthy profit ridesharing before plugging the car back into its supercharger without the owner ever knowing.

In a similar manner, cryptojacking isn’t designed to damage the software or device in any way; just use its resources. And, because the only evidence that shows up in a cryptojacked device is a slight decrease in performance, the stealthy malware is difficult to detect.

How Does Cryptojacking Work?

Cryptojacking is far too easy to carry out in today’s cyber minefield — embedding a malicious link in an email or creating an online ad that loads on a victim’s browser will usually do the trick. All wannabe cryptojackers need to do is access a device — or in some cases, many devices — capable of performing the work. Then, the cryptojacker can use the device(s) to mine blocks for the currency’s blockchain and reap the rewards for themselves.

What Does This Mean for Bank CISOs?

Some banks have opted to accommodate cryptocurrency to remain relevant and competitive in this new financial cyberscape. However necessary, this accommodation comes with significant privacy risks.

Cybercriminals are known to hijack anything that helps reduce mining costs on their end — even enterprise-level cloud-based applications. If a bank uses a cloud-based service (which is difficult not to do these days), it’s susceptible to hijacking.

That bank’s customers would then be at risk for infection of malware. In one fell swoop, a hacker could access thousands of customers’ devices in a single day by infecting the bank’s login page with cryptojacking code.

What Can Bank CISOs Do to Guard Against Cryptojacking?

Watch for telltale signs of cryptojacking malware in your network and devices, preferably using an automated alert system where applicable, and plan ahead for dealing with cryptojackers.

1. Know the warning signs. Watch for decreases in device performance, overheating, or increases in CPU and GPU usage.

2. Leverage tools to help you keep an eye on things. Use automated alerts to catch any unwanted code pushed to internal and external websites — and stay updated on the latest cryptojacking trends.

3. Take preventative measures.

Train and educate your staff on cybersecurity best practices, use anti-cryptomining extensions and ad blockers on your browsers, and disable JavaScript.

The digital threatscape’s reach is endless, forcing organizations to change and adapt constantly. New commodities like cryptocurrency, with roots in a decentralized economy, have quickly become a hacker’s cyberdream. Cybercriminals will exploit any weakness they find and use it for their own gain — and crypto is full of loopholes and opportunities. When it comes to cybercrime and digital self-defense, prevention and detection are critical to protecting your resources.

Want to know how you can guard against cybercrime? Check out some of our other resources:

• Prepare for any cyberattack by running this simulation exercise for banks.

• Learn what you should do if your bank has suffered a data breach.

• Think 2FA makes your bank safe? Think again.