Ride the Lightning

SEC Chair: Hackers Are the Greatest Threat to the Financial Sector

May 19, 2016

ZDNet reported that Mary Jo White, chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) told reporters that hackers are the greatest threat to financial sector.

White said, "What we found, as a general matter so far, is a lot of preparedness, a lot of awareness but also their policies and procedures are not tailored to their particular risks."

Her comments came not long after hackers stole $81 million from the Bangladeshi central bank through the global SWIFT transfer system, which helps banks transfer payments across borders.

SWIFT is a ripe target for hackers – and it is reportedly an easy target. An incident investigator said that the bank has no firewall, and used second-hand switches to connect computer systems to SWIFT.

I gulped audibly when I read that.

The post also reported that our own NSA spied on international payments – and MAY have monkeyed with the amounts held in the some of the accounts. Seriously?

It scares me to think that the global financial transfer system is so vulnerable. Where are our best and brightest in trying to remedy this problem?

On another matter, I am taking a two week blogging sabbatical. See you in a couple of weeks!

E-mail: Phone: 703-359-0700
Digital Forensics/Information Security/Information Technology
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