Finance sector faces increasingly sophisticated cyber criminals
In the not so far past, the biggest concern of financial institutions, mostly banks, was the exposure to robberies committed by criminals hiding behind masks. In our days, with the increase of technology, these criminals not only don’t have to hide anymore, but they don’t even have to step into the bank. The ‘robbery’ is done ‘from the comfort of their homes’ from behind a desktop or a laptop. These so called ‘robbers’ are clever, sophisticated and most likely they never even held a gun…
By a testimony of the FBI, there is a concerning rise in the sophistication and the number of cyber threats to the financial sector, which suppose to grow even more with the adoption of internet based financial systems, ecommerce, the growing implementation of mobile and cloud computing and the use and storage of large data bases on the internet.
Since the rise of the Internet there were hackers, which could crack passwords and go into systems of organizations and companies, create and inject malware, but with time they realized that working with unified efforts is much easier and profitable so they formed organized, privet and trusted groups. This way, they improved their hacking abilities by gathering actors of various and specialized technical skills which allowed for a steady increase in the complexity of the cyber crimes committed by them. Once they started to recruit experienced individuals and provided them with tools, resources and more knowledge, their targets became more and more profitable and their success in committing cyber crimes was considerably improved.
Since Finance Sectors have vast amounts of customer records, confidential and financial documents, clearing and trading information, and hold a considerable amount of financial assets, it means that this sector faces a much larger number of threats than most of the other sectors.
Sources:
http://fsi.gov.au/publications/interim-report/09-technology/security/
http://www.ciosummits.com/Financial_Services_Cyber_Challenges_White_Paper.pdf
https://www.fbi.gov/news/testimony/cyber-security-threats-to-the-financial-sector
