4 Financial Industry Cybersecurity Trends for 2018

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Without a doubt, cybersecurity is and will continue to be the top concern from financial institutions big and small. In 2017, the IBM X-Force® Research 2016 Cyber Security Intelligence Index study reported that the financial services industry was the most targeted-industry for the second year in a row; experiencing the highest volume of security incidents and third-highest volume of attacks. This is not surprising considering the large amount of personal data, intellectual property and physical inventory, in addition to the massive financial assets that companies in this industry hold. To protect your company, it is important to stay on top of the top cybersecurity challenges financial institutions are currently facing. Read more

Video: Office 2007 End-Of-Life

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It’s important to ensure your business is protected, which is now more difficult without security updates, new features, bug fixes or other updates. Upgrading is easy and will keep you well protected.

ISG Technology has multiple solutions for your business to limit disruption and deliver the latest features and benefits from Microsoft Office. Contact us today to upgrade without any interruption to your business.

For more information, visit these links:
Support is Ending for Office 2007
Support is Ending for Mac 2011

 

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Video: ISG Security – Put Trust On Your Side

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Just as quickly as new technologies are developed to secure the information your organization is responsible for, cybercriminals are discovering new ways to get in. And to do it, they’re exploiting one thing – trust.

When you put ISG Technology to work for you, you don’t just put industry leading security experts on your team, you put security at the top of your priority list. You put the concern that someone might be selling you a short-sighted solution to the wayside. You put trust back where it belongs – on your side.

Get Our Whitepaper: 5 Things You Probably Trust, and How They Affect The Security Of Your Business
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Lessons learned from the Bangladesh Bank hack

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Years ago, bank robberies were a very physical affair. Criminals donned ski masks and shot automatic weapons in the air, shouting for tellers to step away from the silent alarm buttons. That said, it would appear thieves have decided that this is just a little too much work. Hacking banks in order to steal money allows for the same reward without having to deal with a hostage negotiator.

In fact, the most recent cyberattack levied against Bangladesh Bank shows just how lucrative these schemes can be. The hackers involved in this scenario made away with around $81 million, which is more loot than any ski-masked thug could ever carry away. However, perhaps the most interesting part of this whole debacle is that this is nowhere near what the culprits originally intended to get. Investigators have discovered that the original plan was to take close to $1 billion when all was said and done, according to Ars Technica.

Unfortunately for the individuals involved, a simple typo wrecked what could have been the biggest criminal act of all time. A transaction meant for the Shalika Foundation was spelled as “Fandation,” which tipped employees off that something was afoot. Regardless, this is still a massive undertaking that demands intense review.

“Bangladesh Bank isn’t completely free of blame.”

How did they get in?

To understand how this whole scheme began, it’s important to comprehend how Bangladesh Bank sends and receives funds. Institutions like this rely on SWIFT software, which basically creates a private network between a large number of financial organizations. This lets them send money to each other without having to worry about hackers – or so the banks thought.

Gaining access to the transactions within this network was basically impossible, unless someone were to be able to compromise a bank’s internal IT systems. This is exactly what the criminals did.

However, Bangladesh Bank isn’t completely free of blame here. The only reason that hackers were able to gain entry was because the financial institution was relying on old second-hand switches that cost about $10 each. Considering how much was at stake, pinching pennies in such a crucial department seems incredibly irresponsible in hindsight. What’s more, the bank didn’t even have a firewall set up to keep intruders out.

Once hackers bypassed this low level of security, they were given free rein to do as they pleased. Accessing Bangladesh Bank’s network allowed them to move on to SWIFT, as the cheap switches didn’t keep these two separate. However, the really interesting part of this whole criminal act was how they took the money without anyone noticing.

Why weren’t they discovered sooner?

In order to make off with the cash, the criminals had to access a piece of software called Alliance Access. This is used to send money, which allowed the hackers to increase transactions in order to make a profit. However, Alliance Access also records transactions. This was a big problem for the thieves, as they couldn’t make money if someone knew they were stealing it.

To fix this, the hackers simply inserted malware that disrupted the software’s ability to properly regulate the money that was being moved. On top of that, this malicious code also modified confirmation messages about the transactions. This allowed the criminals to continue to operate in obscurity, racking up millions of dollars without anyone being the wiser. In fact, they would have gotten close to $1 billion if one of these altered reports didn’t have a spelling error.

A small error cost these hackers hundreds of millions. The hackers could have made so much more money if they’d checked their spelling.

However, understanding so much about how Bangladesh Bank’s system worked has pointed investigators to the notion that this was an inside job. In fact, The Hill reported that “people familiar with the matter” know that a major suspect is a person who works at the bank. No one has been named yet, but getting an employee in on the job certainly makes sense.

Network assessments are a must

Regardless of whether or not this turns out to be an inside job, the fact still remains that Bangladesh Bank was incredibly vulnerable to a hack like this. Relying on cheap network switches is bad enough, but not having any sort of firewall is a major hazard that modern institutions simply cannot allow.

This is why every company should consider receiving a network assessment from ISG Technology. Our skilled experts know how to spot glaring vulnerabilities such as these, and can suggest fixes to ensure the security of private data.

White Paper: Tech For Community Banks

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Register to receive the ISG white paper



community-banksIn the face of regulatory changes and cybersecurity threats, IT plays a more critical role than ever for community banks. This free report will teach you how to not just survive, but how to thrive, with technology as a main driver. Topics covered include:

  • Key trends in regulation and market forces driving change
  • How video conferencing can improve the client experience
  • The latest developments in cybersecurity and what you need to prepare
  • Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity: are you ready?

DCI Explores ISG's Virtualization and Cloud Services

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Industry: Financial

DCI provides full-service bank technology and processing solutions to the financial industry. Headquartered in Hutchinson, Kansas, DCI’s advanced banking solutions include the iCore® bank processing and management system, imaging, Internet banking, networking, teller automation, ATM/card services network, and backroom services. In 2008, iCore won the BankNews Innovative Solutions award for the Best Management Software Solution.

Challenge

Hundreds of community bank clients count on DCI for core information processing services. With virtually all of their financial transactions reliant on the DCI system, bank clients require around-the-clock application services in conjunction with comprehensive information protection. Bankers also look to DCI for innovation and continued cost efficiencies to help maintain competitiveness in cautious financial markets. But managing critical systems for a demanding and growing client based posed mounting challenges, according to Robert Ross, VP of Network & Technical Services at DCI. “It became increasingly time consuming and labor intensive to protect rapidly expanding volumes of mission-critical financial data and continue to satisfy the time and efficiency needs of modern banks.”

A growing client base, increasing systems complexity, and demands for higher levels of Business Continuity and DR caused DCI to re-evaluate its approach to providing services to its clients.

Solution

Virtualize servers on VMware®, deploy multiple NetApp® storage arrays, and automate Disaster Recovery.

Results

John Jones, CEO of DCI, had high praise for the ISG solution. “Moving to the VMware on NetApp environment allows us to deliver near real-time business resumption service to our clients. Whether it’s empowering remote employees with virtual desktops, delivering the processing services clients need to support mobile banking, or providing complete IT services via a private cloud, we have the technology in place to be agile, innovative, and competitive.”
Robert Ross summarized, “By providing full IT services to de novo banks, for example, we can nearly eliminate their initial IT capital investments and staffing requirements. We also help reduce risk. In an age of increasing regulation, offloading compliance and other processing and data management complexities can be a huge advantage for client banks. We now see tremendous opportunity to expand our value to a broad spectrum of bank clients.”

DCI Explores ISG’s Virtualization and Cloud Services

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Industry: Financial

DCI provides full-service bank technology and processing solutions to the financial industry. Headquartered in Hutchinson, Kansas, DCI’s advanced banking solutions include the iCore® bank processing and management system, imaging, Internet banking, networking, teller automation, ATM/card services network, and backroom services. In 2008, iCore won the BankNews Innovative Solutions award for the Best Management Software Solution.

Challenge

Hundreds of community bank clients count on DCI for core information processing services. With virtually all of their financial transactions reliant on the DCI system, bank clients require around-the-clock application services in conjunction with comprehensive information protection. Bankers also look to DCI for innovation and continued cost efficiencies to help maintain competitiveness in cautious financial markets. But managing critical systems for a demanding and growing client based posed mounting challenges, according to Robert Ross, VP of Network & Technical Services at DCI. “It became increasingly time consuming and labor intensive to protect rapidly expanding volumes of mission-critical financial data and continue to satisfy the time and efficiency needs of modern banks.”

A growing client base, increasing systems complexity, and demands for higher levels of Business Continuity and DR caused DCI to re-evaluate its approach to providing services to its clients.

Solution

Virtualize servers on VMware®, deploy multiple NetApp® storage arrays, and automate Disaster Recovery.

Results

John Jones, CEO of DCI, had high praise for the ISG solution. “Moving to the VMware on NetApp environment allows us to deliver near real-time business resumption service to our clients. Whether it’s empowering remote employees with virtual desktops, delivering the processing services clients need to support mobile banking, or providing complete IT services via a private cloud, we have the technology in place to be agile, innovative, and competitive.”
Robert Ross summarized, “By providing full IT services to de novo banks, for example, we can nearly eliminate their initial IT capital investments and staffing requirements. We also help reduce risk. In an age of increasing regulation, offloading compliance and other processing and data management complexities can be a huge advantage for client banks. We now see tremendous opportunity to expand our value to a broad spectrum of bank clients.”

Bank Improves Operations with WAN Optimization

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Industry: Financial

When a St. Louis area bank needed help with a sluggish WAN, they turned to ISG for help. When the lines at Midwest BankCentre started to grow unusually long due to a sluggish network and unresponsive business applications, Larry Albrecht, senior vice president of operations, thought he knew the answer—a new T1 connection.

“We’re a midsize community bank here in the St. Louis area,” said Albrecht. “We do not have a large IT staff. So, when we need help with our technology we typically turn to an outside provider.”

Because Albrecht had already established a good working relationship with ISG Technology, he brought his network bandwidth issues to them for help. “When Larry first contacted us about his problem he was sure that they needed to add a new T1 line,” said Shanon Lightle, account executive at ISG. “I asked him if he would allow us to run an assessment of his network first to determine what his exact problems were before he invested in a new T1 connection. Thankfully, he said ‘yes.’”

With Albrecht’s blessing, a senior network engineer with ISG installed a PacketShaper from Blue Coat to assess their network performance issues. What ISG discovered was eye-opening.

Challenge

“The basic problem was that we had limited to no visibility, or control of our network,” Albrecht said. “But bandwidth wasn’t our biggest problem.”

The PacketShaper that ISG installed also provided them with a granular level of insight into the bank’s Internet usage during business hours. That’s where they discovered two things. “First, we discovered that a portion of our problem was caused by employees checking their Gmail, updating Facebook and watching YouTube videos, bogging down what bandwidth we had available.” said Albrecht. But this wasn’t their biggest challenge.

“Not only was our connection to corporate email and file sharing running slow,” he said, “but our business application that supports our client account creation and modification was practically unusable, causing updates to client accounts to take, on average, about 15 minutes.” These two issues combined to create long lines at the bank counter and a lot of unhappy clients.

Solution

In response to these concerns, ISG installed a Blue Coat Mach5 WAN Optimization solution, which allowed Albrecht’s staff to drastically reduce the size of their business data and file transfers, and increase their bandwidth by 90 percent.

In addition, files and applications that previously required more than 15 minutes to open and update were now responding in fewer than 60 seconds. ISG also deployed a Blue Coat PacketShaper to allow Albrecht and staff to begin shaping their recreational traffic and set maximum thresholds giving priority to business applications. The business results were dramatic. Lines got smaller. Clients smiled more often, and employees at the bank got their work done faster and with less stress. Albrecht was pleased.

“We talked to a couple of different IT service providers about our need for a better solution to our bandwidth problem,” he said, “but we went with ISG primarily because we were comfortable with what we’d experienced with them in the past.”

Results

As happy as Albrecht is with the results, he’s quick to admit that the project had its share of road bumps along the way. “I’ll be real honest, we ran into a few snags with this, when our NetApp SAN application encountered some issues. But ISG was quick to involve NetApp’s engineering team to address that problem,” said Albrecht. “It was gratifying to know that ISG’s relationship with the vendor allowed them to get such a quick response to our problem. ISG did a very good job of jumping on the issues and dealing with frustrations as we encountered them.”

Thanks to ISG’s assessment of the bank’s network, Midwest was able to increase client satisfaction, address their bandwidth issues, and optimize their business applications to improve responsiveness and regain control of their network.

“What I like about ISG is that they’re not a large, anonymous company,” said Albrecht, “and when I call them I’m not talking to an operator in an enormous call center who creates a trouble ticket and maybe calls us back in a few days. Instead, I know that ISG will take my call and respond quickly. They’re very consistent and they’ve shown great interest in establishing a long-term working relationship with our business.”

If you’d like to talk to someone at ISG Technology, Inc. about how they can help your business improve efficiency and address network issues like these, please feel free to call (877) 334-4474 or visit them online at www.isgtech.com.