Over the past decade, the financial sector has invested millions of Rands in security systems and methods with varying levels of success against an ever-evolving field of threats. Vast data assets linked to public and private sector customers make businesses in this industry a top target for attackers. An ongoing trend of moving away from cash and towards customer mobility, diversity of offerings and open banking will continue to challenge security in this arena for the foreseeable future.
Secure identity verification
Financial services’ consumers can be located anywhere and expect both access to their accounts and the ability to transact, at any time. If you combine this with an increasing number of channels across device platforms, threat vectors become numerous. The identity of the customer effectively becomes the secure perimeter.
The solution to this identity/perimeter security challenge involves strengthening multi-factor authentication processes and introducing advanced, context-based security to monitor the service endpoint (e.g. financial applications such as online banking) with users’ activities across all devices.
Nation state attacks
Businesses in the financial sector are now aware that they are a target for nation states. Threats from state sponsored attackers are escalating with global issues such as ongoing tensions in Iran, trade wars with China and rogue states intent on asymmetric warfare. There is an effective cold cyberwar occurring where viruses and zero-day exploits are being stockpiled for use in a potential attack.
The financial industry will be a target as the economy cannot function without critical financial IT infrastructure in place. It’s difficult to predict when or where these attacks may occur, but that does not excuse lack of preparation. Governments are legislating for tougher security for financial industries such as the American NY Department of Financial Services Cybersecurity Regulation, which refers in the introduction to the “ever growing threat posed to information and financial systems by nation-states, terrorist organisations and independent criminal actors.”
Mobile threats
One notable mobile security trend involves the increasing number of malicious apps making their way onto official app stores, for example, two selfie taking apps loaded with malicious malware that were available on the Google Play store. They were downloaded 1.5 million times. The apps would gather data silently and evade removal by becoming invisible and running in the background without a shortcut being visible to the user.
The major mobile OS vendors (Apple and Google) are battling to thoroughly vet the
million, and counting, apps available on their platforms. The vulnerable integrity of mobile as a platform will require the financial industry to inspect its customer and contractor devices more thoroughly, whether by using MDM, or network access control. This may lead to the emergence of a two-tier security model in the mobile space where anti-malware becomes mandatory for mobile devices to interface with financial services.
Insider threat defence
The main motives for insider threats are said to be the following, regardless of sector: grudge, espionage, sabotage, malice, ideology and, of course, one must never discount the main reason – greed. Financial services companies face perpetual insider threats and continue to look for innovative solutions to this problem. A strong privileged access management solution reduces the scope of permission for malicious insiders by controlling the usage of administrative credentials and implementing separation of duties within an organisation.
An established activity monitoring solution can provide the data with which to scrutinise endeavours across financial applications with context. Moreover, AI and machine learning continue to develop in this area and are essential tools for the detection of insider malpractice as and when it occurs.
For more information, contact CA Southern Africa,
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