Week 3 Blog

Major cybersecurity Threats for Financial Institutions

Unencrypted Data would be the first one that financial institution has a great concern. All sensitive data that is in house or transferred thru the cyber space could be breached.  If they are all encrypted, then all the stolen data should be fine since the hackers have a very little chance to decrypt it and use it.

New technologies that the financial institutions adopt would be the second cyber threats.  To adapt with the new technology, to make the business more productive, to attract the customers with new services, man financial institutions willing to spend big money for having new technology for the daily services and operations.  However, new technologies might not have enough time to test throughout all the functions and lead some security holes that give the hackers a chance to break into the system.

Using third-party service might lead the financial institution into cyberattack since many third-party services don’t have a strong security protection or their employee lack of experiences on security or they just lazy to act on all security protections that lead the company into security data breach.

Mobile banking has been increased tremendously and as it is now, mobile devices do not have a strong security protection.  For example, many customers have micro memory card in their phone and they download and store sensitive company information there.  If the phone is stolen, the sensitive data can be opened and viewed easily. 

Reference:

Cybersecurity Association of Maryland, Inc, (Mar 2, 2016).  Retrieved from https://www.mdcyber.com/blog/top-10-cybersecurity-threats-financial-institutions/