Proactive Cyber Security for Financial Professionals
For the financial industry, the rampant proliferation of easy-to-use hacking tools and bad actors willing to deploy them means that executives need to up their game to stay safe.
As we are seeing with increasing frequency, the wide availability of automated hacking tools, cryptocurrencies, and anonymous dark web marketplaces has both democratized and capitalized cybercrime. With very little risk and huge upside potential, almost anyone can now make money from data they steal. While cyberspace is really only a new medium for old practices, it has changed the criminal world forever. Criminals, activists, and nation-states now can realize their goals with greater efficiency, increased speed, and total anonymity. Even more, the risk of getting caught, and/or extradited, is significantly lower.
Hence, in today’s highly connected financial industry, the reality is not if, but when you will experience a cyber breach. How will you prepare for the inevitable? The best way is to own the risk, educate your shareholders and partners of that risk, and create a validated incident response plan. Crisis management, business continuity, and disaster recovery planning all work together to reduce the damage of an attack. Testing and refining these plans through structured walk-throughs, tabletop scenarios, and live exercises will give you the best chance of limiting the potential damage from a breach.
More than any single factor, a strong organizational culture, and employee morale can help create a positive security culture and strong cyber security posture. In our upcoming article, we will go into detail on developing such a culture —and hardening yourself to attack.