The FDIC and OCC put out a joint statement on heightened cybersecurity risk concerns. This ‘heightened’ concern has bubbled up from the worries in the Middle East and Iran. In our nation’s history, oceans have been one of our primary defenses, but in today’s interconnected world, barriers for state-sponsored cyberattacks are removed. In the past several weeks, we have seen several updates from the Department of Homeland Security, FBI, and in this case, regulatory agencies.
As an industry, we tend to make technology over complicated and it is even worse in cybersecurity. Our mission at Finosec is to simplify information security and cybersecurity management in banking. The regulators highlighted three areas: Response and Resiliency, Authentication and Access Management, and Cyber Hygiene. I want to focus on the response and resiliency section today. The big takeaway is we have to change our mindset from if we get compromised to when. How does your team answer these questions?
- Do we have contact information for law enforcement (FBI, Secret Service, local)
- Does our cyber insurance contract include a breach coach? Do we have the contact information?
- Does our cyber insurance include resources for forensics? Have we defined what vendor we are going to use?
- When was our last incident response test? Were the right people included? When is our next test scheduled?
- Sheltered Harbor is referenced, does our core processor have a solution? Are we or should we be leveraging it?
- What’s the status of our backups? Is there any connectivity on our operational systems to our backups where they could be compromised in an attack?
If you have six minutes more, I recorded a video summary on the statement as well, which you can watch here: FDIC FIL Joint Statement
