CYBER CRIME IN BANKING & CAPITAL MARKETS

Ms.K.SINDHUJA

Department of MBA

SANKARA COLLEGE OF SCIENCE & COMMERCE

 

“Technology trust is a good thing, but control is a better one.”

More than millions are those numbers of people or households affected by the worst five cyber attacks in the banking and capital markets sectors.

Cyber security capabilities and issues across the entire financial services industry, is based on findings by the researchers in finance sector, digging deeper into results specifically for banking and capital markets (banking), we can see several cyber security trends to worry about:

• High costs. The average cost of cybercrime for a banking company in 2019 was approximately $16.7 million, 28% higher than the average for all other industries surveyed.
• Greater concerns about malware and web-based attacks. Malware occurrences are experienced by 96% of the banking companies surveyed, with web-based attacks following at 87%.
• Global issues. Looking for a moment at the global study, we can see that the cost of cybercrime is increasing across all countries. The average increase in cyber attack costs for the countries in our sample is up to 26% since 2017.

In addition to these general numbers, We have to look more closely at two areas where we believe banks are under investing:

(1) The people/human aspects of cyber security

(2) Advanced technologies.

The human factor

Initially the cyber crime was initiated by the intervened of the employee working in a credit bureau who secretly copied all the details of the customers personal details including Identification numbers, credit card numbers, and addresses.

In another incident, a former employee stole and sold customer information to millions of mortgage loan applicants. These stories highlight the fact that malicious insiders are a real threat to banks.

 

 

The role of advanced technologies

Automation, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning are being applied by only about one-third (34%) of banking companies surveyed (third-lowest deployment rate). Most investments are being made in security intelligence and threat sharing (79%), as well as advanced perimeter controls (62%).

Banks should be aware, however, that criminals always seem to find a way through their perimeter, sometimes by manipulating insiders through social engineering, as just discussed.

To help prevent this loss of economic value, banks and capital markets firms should:

• Place greater emphasis on protecting and educating people because of the rise in phishing, ransom ware and malicious insider attacks.
• Create controls such that no single employee or compromised machines can get greater damage across the entire organization. Use Privileged Access Management, a control mechanism to put greater scrutiny around the granting of higher access privileges. Also segment data such that people do not have access to a full set of data.
• Grasp the innovation opportunity and more proactively invest in breakthrough technologies to enhance cyber security effectiveness and scale. Use automation and advanced analytics to manage the rising costs of discovering attacks, which is the largest component of spend.
• Invest to prevent information loss and business disruption, which are growing concerns, especially given new privacy regulations like the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA).

Use pressure testing to identify your vulnerabilities. Criminals are constantly searching for your weak points. We should be very cautious in revealing our details. It’s our responsibility to save guard our account privacy.