Title: State of Attacks Against the Financial Services Sector
Presenter: Tom Kellermann, Vice President of Security Awareness
Date: June 15, 2010 at TBD
Location: TBD
Link to Event: N/A
Overview:
U.S. financial markets have long maintained an acceptable level of engineered resilience against IT threats and systems manipulation, but the continued introduction of Internet-based technologies and the proliferation of the global cybercrime phenomenon have introduced an entirely new and hazardous opportunity for remote cyber-attacks to be carried out against our markets and financial services infrastructure.
The business continuity and resiliency movement following 9/11 has exacerbated the cyber-security posture of these assets via the addition of remote backup data centers, increase in remote users and the use of wireless technologies – dramatically increasing the number of avenues by which hackers can now access these once closed systems.
When one discusses the various breeds of cyber-threats that might affect our national financial infrastructure, the most common perception is that denial-of-service attacks are the biggest concern, but the truth is that type of threat, while ominous, is arguably superseded by the potential for attacks that could turn infiltrate or manipulate financial markets.
If organizations in the financial services space are truly serious about meeting their existing mandate to improve IT security from industry regulators and want to understand the most effective manner of rapidly improving their ability to prevent attacks, they must take on the role of an outsider and actively probe their own weaknesses to prioritize risks. Understanding how these systems can manipulated by remote adversaries is paramount to managing the operational risk in today’s hostile digital world.
