Earlier this month, Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase, and Wells Fargo all reported major cyber attacks. The bank hacks, thought to sourced to Iran, were first realized mid September, although reportedly could be part of a broader campaign dating as far back as last year, according to Reuters.
The high-profile hacks initially affected the sites of both Chase and Bank of America, causing surges in traffic that resulted in Web site disruptions and outages.
Wells Fargo was the latest financial institution to report a massive cyber attacks, which affected more than 21 million online customers and 8.5 million mobile bankers.
All of cases, the targeted banks were pummeled with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which bombard a network with more traffic than it can handle, causing it to stop functioning and shut down.
Reasons for the attacks are, at this point, speculative, although theories range from retaliation by Islamic extremists for a U.S.-made anti-Muslim film, to state sponsored retaliation for tighter U.S. imposed economic sanctions on Iran.
Wells Fargo was the latest financial institution to report a massive cyber attacks, which affected more than 21 million online customers and 8.5 million mobile bankers.
All of cases, the targeted banks were pummeled with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks, which bombard a network with more traffic than it can handle, causing it to stop functioning and shut down.
Reasons for the attacks are, at this point, speculative, although theories range from retaliation by Islamic extremists for a U.S.-made anti-Muslim film, to state sponsored retaliation for tighter U.S. imposed economic sanctions on Iran.
But who is responsible might not be as ascertainable as how this problem can be addressed when–not if–it happens again.
Banks get hacked, and hacked with regularity, because, as the age-old joke makes clear, that’s where the money is. But the fact that banks are being easily targeted en mass undermine perceptions of them as being more secure than other market verticals. It also suggests that the financial services industry still has a long ways to go in terms of effective cybersecurity.
But security holes, illuminated by the spate of recent hacks, also means that there are still lots of opportunities for the channel. As such, partners will almost certainly be required to step up their game in financial services markets in the near future now that the industry is in the public spotlight.
Financial services and banking institutions are among the most heavily regulated in terms of cybersecurity, subjected to a plethora of regulatory compliance audits under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), and the Bank Secrecy Act, as well as a slew of state cybersecurity regulations and data breach laws.
Historically, partners have gained entry into these markets by offering solutions and related services that play to these compliance mandates. And those solutions, which range from standard firewalls and antivirus to more complex data protection and encryption products, are still undeniably necessary.
From channelnomics.com at http://channelnomics.com/2012/10/02/bank-hacks-illuminate-security-shortfalls/