Financial services organizations can no longer afford to ignore the impact of technology on their bottom line. Mobile applications, web-based services and cloud resources are critical to meet client expectations and drive ROI. Yet banks also face rising cyber risk as malicious actors recognize the value in compromising financial networks and exploiting information technology (IT) vulnerabilities. The Verizon DBIR indicates the top threats to this industry as System Intrusion, Miscellaneous Errors and Social Engineering. They represent 78% of the industry breaches. As a result, cybersecurity in the financial industry plays a critical role in defending current infrastructure and preparing banks, credit unions, and other financial institutions to anticipate new attacks. Here’s how HALOCK can help.

“extremely helpful making sure all pen tests were completed in a small time frame.”

– Financial Services Consulting Company

What are the Key Challenges in Financial Cyber Security?

Financial firms are in a unique position when it comes to cybersecurity.

They can’t ignore the increasing need for robust digital frameworks that include on-demand services and cloud-based solutions, but the nature of personal and business financial data makes it a high-value target for attackers.

As a result, firms now face several challenges when it comes to financial services information security, including:

• Ransomware: If attackers can compromise networks and lock down banking data, firms may have no choice but to shut down services or risk paying the ransom. Because of emerging frameworks such as ransomware-as-a-service (RaaS), these attacks are on the rise.

• Remote Work Risks: Cybersecurity and finance efforts now face increasing risks from remote work. Here’s why: As more staff work partially or entirely from home, hackers have greater opportunities to hijack data in transit or compromise remote workstations that aren’t properly secured.

• Cloud-Based Cyber Attacks: The increasing use of multicloud environments can help banks better serve clients and manage disparate data sources, but also create potential vulnerabilities where cloud connections overlap. As a result, cybersecurity in the financial sector is now a top priority for companies as they look to balance the need for accessible data with the challenge of keeping this data safe.

What Services Can Help Secure Financial Services?

Companies now recognize the value of information security in the banking and financial industry and are willing to spend. Experts predict global security spend to surpass $120 billion in just two years. Still, this growing market presents a challenge: Where are organizations best served by IT security investment? At HALOCK, we offer a range of security services designed to help financial institutions improve their cybersecurity posture without reducing productivity. Your organization can strengthen your data governance and security with:

• Risk Based Threat Assessment: Improve protection against the five MITRE ATT&CK Types – especially ransomware. Prioritize security controls to enhance or implement using the best threat data the cybersecurity community offers, leveraging the HALOCK Industry Threat (HIT) Index, a model for estimating the most likely (and least likely) ways your organization will be hit by a cybersecurity or information security attack.

• HALOCK’s Cloud Security Assessment: Gain insight into your risks. The assessment provides a review of Azure, AWS, and Google (GCP) cloud environments to identify risks and recommends how to remediate them.

• Security Management: Our team of security experts can help finance industry organizations assess their current IT risk and develop strategies to minimize potential cybersecurity incidents.

• Compliance: Bank PCI compliance, GDPR compliance, HIPAA compliance, CCPA compliance, PATRIOT Act compliance — the list seems endless. HALOCK’s compliance teams streamline the process management and ongoing assessment necessary to meet compliance standards. For PCI DSS, ensure you have implemented the proper standards for your specific cardholder data environment (CDE). Understand changes in password requirements, training, Targeted Risk Analysis (TRA), scanning, outsourcing eCommerce, automation, and more. We can help you achieve and maintain PCI Compliance. Learn how these requirements impact your program. 

• Penetration Testing or Red Teaming: You need to be certain your network is secure. HALOCK’s financial network penetration testing services measure the effectiveness of current safeguards and recommend critical remediation and upgrades. Verify your networks, wireless, web applications, and employees are securing your sensitive data and private information. Test to see if your controls and team can respond appropriately in the event of a breach with an Assumed Breach or Adversary Simulation penetration test. Get a full penetration testing report that details your vulnerabilities by criticality, with a remediation plan on how to reduce your risk. A Recurring Penetration Testing program can assess your safeguards throughout the year for a proactive security approach. 

• External Attack Surface Management (EASM) service provides continuous discovery, exploit validation, and risk-based prioritization to keep you ahead of threats. With an evolving attack surface, get the visibility and insight to prioritize your security controls.

• Incident Response and Forensic Services: Incidents happen. When they do, banking and financial firms need to know everything they can to catch those responsible and prevent incidents from occurring again. HALOCK’s incident response process, management, training, tabletop exercises, and forensic services can help. Enhance your incident response plan (IRP). Assess your network with a compromise assessment. The proper response to an attack can help minimize damage and further risk – get your team response-ready. Explore an ongoing program that gets in front of any potential threats or attacks with an Incident Response Readiness as a Service (IRRaaS) program.

• Mergers & Acquisitions (M&A): As part of the due diligence process of an M&A, organizations must understand the risk and security profile of their partner or target company. You must determine what liabilities or risks can arise under the other company’s cybersecurity program. With HALOCK’s M&A program, we can help you through the entire process from pre-acquisition to post-acquisition to identify risks, remediation steps, and establish reasonable security.

• Third Party Risk Management (TPRM) /Vendor Risk Management – Ensure third-party partners are aligned with your organization’s risk controls. Vendors and contractors serve as an extension of your group. They represent you and should operate under your business requirements. A recent Panorays study revealed 41% of organizations are not sure if their suppliers were out of compliance in the past year. It also indicated that half of the respondents cited third-party risk as one of the top 5 items in their risk register and expect this risk to increase. A required best practice is to always conduct a supplier risk assessment to keep your vendors on point with your security posture. HALOCK can help build and manage a specific TPRM program for your financial services environment.

• Cybersecurity Risk Assessments for financial services firms – Regulations require your safeguards to be reasonable to your organization, customers, and partners. With many frameworks available, how do you establish your acceptable risk? The Duty of Care Risk Assessment (DoCRA) helps you define a reasonable security strategy factoring in compliance and safeguards based on your specific mission, objectives, and social responsibility. With the release of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Cybersecurity rules on disclosure, it’s essential that you regularly review your risk profile.

• Risk Management Program – An ongoing risk management program provides continuous maintenance and insight into your risk profile and how to enhance your security. This comprehensive program enables you to prioritize your security investments while practicing reasonable security.

• Privacy – CCPA is the most sweeping legislation to date in the U.S. that concerns the protection of personal information. It broadens the definition of what constitutes personal information and gives California citizens greater control over what companies can do with their personal data. The California privacy law includes the right to exempt their own personal information from being shared or purchased on the open market. Understand the impact this change and other states’ requirements have on your organization. 

• Cyber Security Awareness Training – With many employees now working remotely, they are targets for hackers. Ensure they understand the potential threats they may experience and best practices to prevent cyber attacks on your bank, institution, or customer data. Security Awareness training will guide how to detect suspicious activity and what to do in the event of a security incident.

• Security Engineering & Tools: Ensure you have the proper infrastructure to defend the sensitive data of your clients, employees, and more. Conduct sensitive data scanning, security architecture reviews and implement threat monitoring programs to proactively secure against cyber threats and minimize your risk. Ensure you have the required security controls like multifactor authentication (MFA) or web application firewalls (WAF). A consistent and steady review of your threat landscape is a best practice for your industry through a managed detection and response program (MDR) or our proactive Threat Hunting Program.

Direct Benefits

Financial information security is often perceived as a necessary expense — an unavoidable cost that financial institutions must bear to avoid legal ramifications and PR disasters. In practice, effective implementation of cybersecurity in banking can save money and empower banks to better manage and defend their networks. By leveraging HALOCK’s experts to create agile security strategies, banks, credit unions, and fintech firms can better prioritize IT spending and reduce technology sprawl. Discovering potential weaknesses across existing network applications and ensuring that current IT practices meet industry compliance standards is also critical. Our highly skilled pen testing teams can help financial services firms track down vulnerabilities in open-source and third-party components, while our compliance experts provide the critical oversight necessary to identify and remediate regulatory challenges. Finally, incident response and forensic services can help banks discover emerging attack patterns and track down critical risks within their organization — such as insider threats or misconfigured IT services.

“The team was fantastic, we could not be more pleased from our side. Testing was well planned and results really well documented.”

– Insurance Company

Purpose-Driven Protection

At HALOCK, we empower cybersecurity in the banking industry with purpose-driven protection. Our clients get custom-built solutions that meet both current needs and help protect against evolving threats. By combining prescriptive expertise and implementation excellence, we’re able to meld critical thought leadership with deep technical skill to find an ideal balance between security spend and organizational imperatives. Establish reasonable safeguards based upon your mission, objectives, and obligations.  Discover how HALOCK can help. Develop a reasonable security strategy to address your changing working environment and risk profile. HALOCK is a trusted risk management and cybersecurity consulting firm, compliance, and penetration testing company headquartered in Schaumburg, IL, in the Chicago area, servicing clients throughout the United States.

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