In recent years, financial and banking institutions worldwide have been the preferred targets of many cybercrime groups. Targeted attacks allow them to divert increasing sums of money, which impacts the production stability and reputation of the organizations targeted.

Both IT and security managers at these institutions must invest in understanding the specific cyberthreats that affect them, then implement the countermeasures necessary to safeguard their banking or financial activities.

The unique challenges of banking and financial information systems

Banking and financial information systems have characteristics that tend to make their protection more complex than traditional IT environments:

• Multiplicity of information systems: Banking information systems (IS) are essentially split into several related sub-IS, making end-to-end consistency extremely complex. This complexity and fragmentation, whether desired or merely tolerated, causes irreparable structural weaknesses.

• Opening the IS to the outside: Banking or insurance systems must be open to the outside, both to customers wishing to access their management interface and to trusted third parties and intermediation partners in order to ensure financial or fiduciary transfers. The IS are interconnected with various external entities, which can be called “partners” in the broad sense of the term.

• This is a particularly attractive target for attackers: It is obvious that attackers will target the most vulnerable IS (reducing the complexity and the incubation period of the attack), as well as the IS with the best promise of profitability. Thus, a banking or financial system represents an especially attractive target.

To read full download the whitepaper:

HACKERS VS. FINANCE: STRATEGIES CISOS CAN TAKE TO THE BANK

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