Summary of my blogs

Hai Pham - Week 12

Week 12 – Summary of my blog

The theme for my blog is Cybersecurity in Financial Service.  I chose this topic because I have been working for a financial services company and one of the top priority of the company is cybersecurity.  It is because the company keeps so much sensitive information such as customer personal information, proprietary information, monetary data, and these data so crucial to the company, to the customer that cannot be leak out.  If it does, the company would run into big problem such as damage reputation, financial lost, lawsuit and losing customers. 

All around my blog, all the topics were related to cybersecurity threats, data management, how to protect the data, most common threat to the financial security and the cybersecurity trend.

As it has been stated, financial institution hold both financial and personal confidential data and that was why it has been become one of the most targets for hackers to attack.  To prevent the attack or the loss of data, the companies have encrypted the data.  With encrypted data, the hackers have a very little chance to decrypt it and use it.

I have talked about different ways of data encryptions that financial institutions use the most.  The first technique that I mentioned was the Data Encryption Standard (DES) which used only 56 bit of key size to encrypted the data.  This method had some security holes so it has been implemented to have 168 bit, which is call Triple DES.  Then I talked about two other strong encryption methods, which were RSA and Blowfish that even have a strong encryption method that can secure the data more.

One of my blogs was talking about the most common way that hackers use to attack financial institution is Phishing.  Right after I talk about this, the WannaCry ransomware came out and it mainly use the Phishing method attack the PC’s users. 

Bottom line is financial institutions are the most victim for cyberattack.  Companies are fully aware of it but why there are still victims out there day after day?  Hackers are constantly finding the ways, smarter method to attack and so, financial companies need to keep their environment up-to-date with technology to protect themselves.

Blogging is a good way to share the thoughts to others.  When writing the blogs, it is required me to do some research to find out the facts and real examples about the topic that I am writing. This help me to broaden my knowledge.  Then I also have a chance to read other blogs and this definitely helps me with more useful information and thought that people share.