Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Figuring out which side is winning the Cyber War?

By Oliver David


Every day there's a brand new headline about cyber attacks and data breaches. The ever increasing sophistication of these attacks and the expanding vulnerabilities due to the rise of mobile computing have made all organizations take a harder look at their data security. In particular, financial institutions, in light of the Global Payments data breach are rethinking data security and beginning to adopt new fraud fighting techniques as well as technologies.

"The reality is that the people who are looking to commit fraud are targeting anybody who has Internet access to applications that allow money to be moved," comments Ben Knieff, Director of a company that provides financial crime, risk and compliance solutions to the banking and credit industries. Outside of the retail banking area, hackers could target asset managers, wealth managers, even investors who have access to online assets, relates Knieff.

Monetary solutions firms have usually been ahead from the game with regards to information security. The extremely nature from the information that they gather and shop tends to make them a prime target for cyber thieves. But using the wave of crimes by groups like Anonymous and also the large information breach that affected Visa, MasterCard and American Express card holders have forced these firms to step up their security efforts.

An instance will be the information breach that Citibank suffered in Might of 2011. Following it was found, it took 2 weeks prior to Citigroup officials concluded that thieves had captured information that included the names, account numbers, and e-mail addresses around 360,000 clients.

But even with these stepped up efforts, financial institution security professionals know that these cyber attacks are relentless and even more sophisticated than in the past. Some say that cyber thieves can purchase crime-ware kits on the internet for as little as $400 to $700 depending on the number of computers they wish to attack.

It seems that as one side gets more sophisticated the other must as well. At this point, it seems as though the battle is still waging and no one side has fully won the war against data theft. As mobile data becomes even more ubiquitous, there will be more ways for hackers to obtain data, the war, it would seem has just begun.

Providing for usb protection will add a strong layer of security for information on flash drives.




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