firewall Archives - Safe Systems

18 Jan 2024

Banks, Compliance, Credit Unions, Security, Technology Safe Systems 0 comment

Top Blogs of 2023

Our Top Blog Posts of 2023

As we begin the new year, it’s a great time to revisit some of the most popular blogs we published in 2023. Our top blogs from last year covered a range of topics, including a cybersecurity outlook, updated third-party risk management guidelines, using conditional access policies (CAPs) and multifactor authentication (MFA) to enhance security within Microsoft Azure Active Directory (AD), and NetConnect 2023. If you didn’t have a chance to read these posts—or simply want to review them—here is a recap of each of them. They offer unique perspectives, best practices, and a wealth of insights that can help your financial institution prepare for greater success in the year ahead.

2023 Cybersecurity Outlook for Community Banks and Credit Unions

Safe Systems’ 2023 Cybersecurity Outlook for Community Banks and Credit Unions revealed valuable peer-to-peer insights that can help financial institutions enhance their security posture. The survey highlights cyber preparedness and budget restraints as top security challenges of more than 50% of the 160 participating financial institutions. It also shared participants’ feedback on other important areas, including prevention and detection security layers; employee security awareness training and testing; and advanced firewall features. For instance, respondents use multiple layers of security, but less than 50% of them combine every security layer listed in the survey. Survey respondents also use a variety of security training—including resource-intensive individual instruction. In addition, most of the survey participants are taking advantage of advanced firewall features, although only 24% of 135 respondents leverage sandboxing technology to detect threats. Read more.

Updated Regulatory Guidelines on Third-Party Risk Management

In June, federal bank regulatory agencies issued updated guidelines to make it easier for financial institutions to manage third-party risks. This new guidance from the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) impacts all banking institutions that use third parties. The majority of statements in the new guidance focus on the planning, due diligence, and contract phases with an emphasis on pre-engagement. Since auditors and examiners will be looking more closely at what happens during the pre-engagement stage, institutions need to place more emphasis on scrutinizing potential third parties. Not all statements in the guidance will apply to all institutions or relationships, so we have developed an interactive checklist designed to walk you through key regulatory requirements of the third-party relationship life cycle. Read more.

Using CAPs and MFA to Enhance Security within Microsoft Azure AD

There was a surge in successful phishing campaigns last year, including sophisticated schemes that were able to bypass MFA. MFA-resistant phishing is a significant threat since this type of attack could impact a vast segment of organizations that rely on Microsoft Azure AD (now known as Microsoft Entra ID) and Microsoft M365 services to support their operations. However, financial institutions can use a variety of measures to prevent cyberattacks, including Conditional Access Policies (CAPs). CAPs, which are foundational to safeguarding identities within Microsoft Entra ID, protect the initial step of the identification chain—the sign-in attempt. To maximize protection, institutions should stack multiple CAPs, such as requiring MFA, denying sign-ins from outside of the USA, and requiring device compliance. When designing CAP logic, they should take a broad approach to the scope of the CAP to impact as many areas as possible. Institutions can take a multi-layered approach to optimizing security by leveraging multiple security tactics, technologies, and resources. Read more.

NetConnect 2023—A Glimpse into the Future of Technology and Compliance

The 2023 NetConnect Customer User Conference brought Safe Systems’ customers, employees, and partners together in Alpharetta, Ga. to discuss banking industry trends, challenges, and innovations. NetConnect 2023 provided valuable insights into banking and technology’s vital role in shaping the industry’s future. With multiple informative sessions, the conference covered the significance of hope in business, changes relating to regulatory compliance, vulnerability management, and Microsoft Azure fundamentals. Read more.

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11 Jan 2024

Banks, Credit Unions, Security Jamie Davis 0 comment

Advanced Firewall Features Provide Critical Protection Against Cybersecurity Threats

With the risk of security breaches and data compromises constantly growing, traditional firewalls are not equipped with the capabilities financial institutions need to optimize their network security. Advanced firewalls—also known as next-generation firewalls (NGFWs)—have more complex features that can help institutions block unwanted traffic, prevent cyberattacks, and enhance their security posture. NGFWs go beyond the capacity of conventional firewalls by capitalizing on other network filtering functions.

Commonly Adopted Features Among Survey Respondents

Today many community banks and credit unions employ a variety of advanced firewall features to keep potential hackers at bay, according to the findings of Safe Systems’ 2023 Cybersecurity Outlook for Community Banks and Credit Unions survey. As expected, a majority of the 135 survey respondents use (62%), TLS/SSL traffic inspection (54%), and (41%).

Underutilized Features – Sandboxing and Dynamic Threat Feeds

Surprisingly, only 24% of survey respondents indicate that they leverage sandboxing, which provides a secure, isolated location to test possible threats like files, codes, or patches. While a small percentage have adopted this advanced feature, other research shows that 87% of security professionals report that sandboxes arm them with important information.

Another underutilized feature —33% of 81 respondents—is dynamic threat feeds which allow good network traffic in and keep bad traffic out while ensuring critical processes continue to work. Dynamic threat feeds represent a real-time, continuous data stream that collects information related to cyber risks so that institutions can act on potential or current threats. The threat feeds incorporated into the threat engines can determine where traffic begins geographically and use that location as a deciding factor—even before evaluating if the information is allowed by a firewall policy. Applying this basic logic can help institutions save valuable time and resources while protecting their environment against locations that are known to produce more security threats.

In addition to covering advanced firewall features, the 2023 Cybersecurity Outlook for Community Banks and Credit Unions survey explores several other important areas, including employee security awareness training and testing, vulnerability and patch management, Microsoft 365 services, email infrastructure, and cybersecurity preparedness.

While it is encouraging that research indicates that financial institutions are using several advanced features of NGFWs, they can do even more to take advantage of this technology. To learn more about how advanced firewalls can provide critical defense for your institution’s network security, download the complete findings of the 2023 Cybersecurity Outlook for Community Banks and Credit Unions. Or read our white paper on “Improving Security Posture Through Next-Generation Firewall Features.”

30 Nov 2023

Banks, Compliance, Credit Unions, Security, Technology Jamie Davis 0 comment

Important Industry Insights on the Use of Anti-Malware and Advanced Features for Ransomware Protection

According to the IC3 2022 Internet Crime Report, the FBI received 2,385 complaints identified as ransomware with adjusted losses of more than $34.3 million. Moreover, 870 of these complaints indicated that organizations belonging to a critical infrastructure sector, such as financial services, were victims of a ransomware attack. This makes it imperative for banks and credit unions to employ a variety of measures to protect themselves against the growing threat of ransomware attacks. Yet many financial institutions that are leveraging anti-malware solutions are not using advanced features that can help protect against ransomware threats. According to Safe Systems’ 2023 Cybersecurity Outlook for Community Banks and Credit Unions, advanced features for anti-malware/anti-ransomware solutions such as root cause analysis, advanced machine learning algorithms, and sandbox analysis only received 12% or less of the answers among the survey participants.

With advanced features, financial institutions can more effectively monitor security threats on endpoints and ascertain the source and extent of an attack. Institutions that want to enhance their ability to detect and respond to threats might consider expanding their cybersecurity budget to increase spending on advanced anti-malware and endpoint protection features.

Recovery Strategies

As part of their recovery strategies, more than one-third of 144 survey respondents say they have implemented notification measures, including notifications to customers, regulators, and applicable insurance carriers. This is critical given the recently finalized interagency Computer-Security Incident Notification Rule. It requires banking organizations to notify their primary federal regulator about any significant “computer-security incident” as soon as possible after a cyber incident happens. (A computer-security incident, as defined by the rule, is an occurrence that results in actual harm to the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of an information system or the information that the system processes, stores, or transmits.) Nearly 30% also leverage other important recovery strategies such as monitoring for the early detection of potential incidents and eliminating intruder access points.

Other Key Security Issues

In addition to shedding light on how institutions use advanced features for anti-malware/anti-ransomware solutions, our comprehensive survey highlights several other security issues, including Microsoft 365 services, email infrastructure, advanced firewall features, vulnerability and patch management, and more. Banks and credit unions must effectively address all of these areas to stay ahead of the constantly evolving cybersecurity landscape.

Download a copy of our latest white paper to read the complete survey findings, which can provide a deeper understanding of current cybersecurity concerns and best practices to enhance your institution’s security posture.

16 Nov 2023

Banks, Compliance, Credit Unions, Security, Technology Jamie Davis 0 comment

What You Need to Know from the 2023 Cybersecurity Outlook for Community Banks and Credit Unions

As cyber threats become more complex, aggressive, and prevalent, implementing cybersecurity mitigation strategies is becoming more critical in the financial services sector. Not surprisingly, cyber preparedness and budget restraints are the top security challenges for more than half of the financial institutions that responded to the Safe Systems survey, 2023 Cybersecurity Outlook for Community Banks and Credit Unions.

Our analysis presents input from approximately 160 participants who responded to 55 questions (including multiple-choice) based on how relevant each query was to their organization.* In addition to focusing on the top security challenges, the survey highlights respondents’ input on several other critical areas, including:

Prevention and Detection Security Layers: Modern operating environments require a more robust security strategy that goes beyond implementing a basic firewall or anti-malware solution to protect their information and infrastructure from the growing number of cyber threats. Survey respondents are implementing multiple security layers, including firewall, patch management, anti-malware, email encryption, employee training and testing, vulnerability monitoring, and security log monitoring. However, less than 50% of all respondents use every security layer listed in the survey, which indicates they can do more to protect themselves against cyberattacks.
Employee Security Awareness Training and Testing: 95% of all cybersecurity issues can be linked to mistakes made by individuals, with 43% of breaches attributed to insider threats, according to the 2022 Global Risk Report by the World Economic Forum, making employee security awareness training and testing critical for financial institutions. Accordingly, survey respondents are deploying multiple types of security training, including simulated phishing attacks, self-service online training and exercises, interactive classroom training, and more. Of the 144 participants responding to this question, 60% indicate they conduct individual training based on need, which is notable because this method of instruction normally requires more time and resources.
Advanced Firewall Features: A majority of the participants responding to this question indicate that they are using one or more advanced firewall (or next-gen firewall) features, such as intrusion prevention or detection systems (IPS/IDS), transport layer security (TLS)/secure socket layers (SSL), and Geo-IT filtering. Whether managed in-house or through an outside provider, these expanded capabilities can help institutions protect their network and institution against a broad array of threats. Sandboxing, for example, provides a safe, isolated environment to execute and observe potentially malicious code from unverified programs, files, suppliers, users, or websites. Out of 135 respondents, only 24% indicate they have sandboxing despite its ability to identify threats.
Cybersecurity Preparedness: Examiners recognize the increasing volume and sophistication of cyber threats and have an increased focus on cybersecurity preparedness in assessing the effectiveness of an institution’s overall information security program. Out of 128 respondents, 52% confirm that the focus on information security, including cybersecurity, has increased during their IT audits and exams. IT examiners and auditors are also reviewing whether institutions have completed any of the common cybersecurity assessments (e.g., CAT, ACET, or CRI/NIST), and they are using them to evaluate institutions’ security posture during an exam. According to the same respondents, 43% say they had their cybersecurity assessment reviewed and used as part of their latest IT exam, and 39% indicate that they received recommendations based on it.

To access the complete survey and gain valuable peer-to-peer insights that can help your institution enhance its cybersecurity decision-making process, read “2023 Cybersecurity Outlook for Community Banks and Credit Unions“.

* The number of respondents varies per question. For multiple-choice questions, the Percent (Respondents) is calculated by dividing each answer count by the total unique respondents, and the Percent (Answers) is calculated by dividing each answer count by the total counts collected.

06 Oct 2023

Banks, Compliance, Credit Unions, Security, Technology Jamie Davis 0 comment

2024 Budgeting for Technology and Cybersecurity in Community Banks and Credit Unions

In the modern banking landscape, technology and cybersecurity are not just optional extras but fundamental necessities. For community financial institutions—which often operate with more limited resources than their larger counterparts—budgeting wisely in these areas is critical. Failure to properly invest could not only compromise efficiency and customer service but also expose institutions to potentially devastating cyber threats.

There are three categories that community banks and credit unions should consider when allocating budgets: cybersecurity, compliance along with its associated regulatory technology (RegTech), and general technology. Here are important considerations for each of these areas:

Cybersecurity

Cyber threats are ever-evolving, and no financial institutions are immune. Measures such as firewalls, encryption, and intrusion detection systems are basic requirements. Financial institutions also need to go further by investing in regular security audits and employee training. In today’s threat landscape, allocating a sufficient budget for cybersecurity measures is non-negotiable.

The best technology and cybersecurity measures are only as good as the people who use them. Community banks and credit unions should set aside funds for regular training programs to ensure staff are up to date with the latest technologies and security protocols. There are some great tools available that provide training and testing and run phishing simulations to see which employees may be your weakest links.

The odds are that at this point, your institution has an account in Microsoft’s cloud solution, Azure. OneDrive, Exchange Online, and many other Microsoft solutions are connected to Azure and may even be part of your Microsoft license. It is important to review the Azure tenant or management console to ensure you are dictating your security settings and not Microsoft. You can accomplish this through various ways including implementing conditional access policies (CAPS), which is the buzzword of 2023. If you are not using CAPs, you should immediately find out how to implement them and identify which ones are critical to your security. Also, Azure is a cloud-based management console, so if it is compromised, the ramifications can be detrimental. Monitoring key reports, accounts, and settings is critical for the long-term security of your institution.

Below are some real-life events and numbers that illustrate just how critical this type of management can be. (We discovered these events last year in our review of a small number of community financial institutions.)

Event:	Number of Times:
Successful sign-in from outside the US:	674 times
Sign in from outside the US (valid password but MFA failed):	37 times
Mailbox settings like (access to email, send on behalf of, forwarded) changed:	1,970 times
OneDrive files shared externally:	708 times
Administrative roles assigned to user:	1,607 times
Large number of failed sign-in attempts for a user:	11,116 times

While some of the numbers above represent actual intentional changes, the sheer volume indicates that a large number of these events are not approved/intended actions made by the institution. Obviously, criminals are targeting these accounts. Hence, there is no option but to be proactive in monitoring and managing the security of your account with the appropriate settings, reports, alerts, and management. Also, note the multifactor authentication (MFA) stat. It only happened 37 times, but this signifies that there were 37 times MFA was the difference between protection and compromise. This underscores the urgent need to implement and maintain MFA.

Lastly, evaluate your firewalls. At this point, a next-generation firewall (NGFW) is a must. According to Gartner, NGFW are firewalls that have moved past just port/protocol inspection and have added application-level inspection. Advanced firewalls also have integrated intrusion prevention built into the solution, along with the ability to bring in intelligence from outside the firewall. A prime example of this is the FS-ISAC intelligence feed. Other advanced features may include sandboxing, SSL inspection, and other more advanced features to improve your cybersecurity posture. If you have an older firewall not based on NGFW, you simply may not have all of the features you need to effectively protect your network.

Compliance and RegTech

Regulatory requirements are becoming increasingly complex, and failing to meet them can affect both the institution and the people in charge of managing these risks. Investing in RegTech can automate and streamline compliance processes, making it easier for community banks and credit unions to adhere to pertinent laws.

These investments may take the form of a virtual information security officer (VISO) service, which has become extremely popular lately. The workload and expectations of an ISO have intensified in recent years. Many community financial institutions are looking for a virtual solution to augment the ISO responsibilities and processes. A benefit of VISO services is they provide continuity if and/or when there is a personnel change in this critical position inside the institution.

In June of 2023, regulatory agencies released new guidance for managing third-party risk, formally or often referred to as vendor management. Expect 2024 to be a year when the agencies expect these guidelines to be implemented at financial institutions. If you manage your vendor management/third-party risk management in-house, you could have some work to do to implement these changes. It may be time to consider an application to manage these ever-changing requirements for you. If you already use an application to manage third-party risks, be sure the needed changes have been updated and you are trained on how to use them.

General Technology

A key focus for technology today concerns what to move to the Cloud and when. Moving infrastructure to the Cloud is often a trade-off between operational versus capital expenditures as well as the benefits versus the perceived risks of the Cloud. Moving servers to the Cloud in 2024 will make sense for a lot of institutions. However, it is more likely that many institutions will receive their solutions via a cloud service provider. Most services and applications vendors have found it easier to manage the server themselves and offer the solution through the Cloud rather than have it installed on different hardware across their customer base. Expect this consolidation and movement to cloud-based solutions to continue and budget accordingly. If the vendor is transferring responsibility from you and your employees to themselves by hosting the service, expect the licensing or price to increase. Even if the licensing cost goes up, you may still gain a net benefit as you no longer have to maintain, upgrade, and manage hardware.

Another technology to consider moving to the Cloud is disaster recovery. There are very few solutions that allow for redundancy, recovery time, minimization of management/ownership challenges, etc., which is why cloud-based disaster recovery is an excellent option. A fully managed cloud recovery process can decrease your recovery time objectives by significant amounts and remove a lot of duplicated hardware. If your disaster recovery solution isn’t in the Cloud or if you are not convinced that what you have in place is as robust as you need it to be, consider the Cloud as a viable alternative.

Conclusion

Budgeting for technology and cybersecurity is a complex task that requires a keen understanding of current needs, future trends, and emerging threats. By allocating resources wisely across these critical areas, community banks and credit unions can secure their operations, enhance customer experience, and stay ahead in a competitive marketplace.

27 Jan 2023

Banks, Credit Unions, Security Will McWilliams 0 comment

What to Look for in a New Firewall Vendor

If your bank or credit union needs a firewall vendor, it’s important to know what to look for to meet your security and regulatory requirements. Maybe you are proactively searching for a new firewall provider or suddenly discovered that you need to replace your current one. Whatever the case, you should search for a firewall vendor that specializes in the financial industry. This will ensure your financial institution has access to expertise and insights that are more specific to banking regulations.

In addition, you should look for a vendor that can serve as a “one-stop-shop” that covers all the security angles. The company should provide an all-inclusive solution that encompasses firewall monitoring, and management as well as intrusion detection and prevention. It’s also important to find a firewall vendor that offers concise and digestible reporting, along with meaningful insights created specifically for the banking community.

It is also equally important to search for a firewall vendor that can meet your institution’s implementation time frame. Ideally, you should plan five to six months out for a firewall implementation to compensate for hardware lead times; however, this may not always be possible. For example, your institution may have encountered an unexpected problem with renewal and need to quickly pivot to another firewall vendor. In this case, you will need to look for a vendor that is capable of deploying a firewall within a tight timeline.

As a precautionary measure, financial institutions must stay on top of contract management. Institutions should have a good relationship with their vendors and review contracts well before they are scheduled to renew. They should closely examine the contract terms and ask questions to ensure they are aware of any upcoming revisions or new developments. This can help them avoid getting caught off guard by any last-minute contractual issues that may disrupt their operation.

So how can banks and credit unions find a prospective firewall vendor? They can consult peers in the banking industry and inquire if their current service providers also offer firewalls. Ultimately, financial institutions should make sure their selected vendor has the appropriate security layers and reporting needed to check all the boxes from an examiner’s perspective. Safe Systems’ Managed Perimeter Defense (MPD), for example, employs multiple layers of advanced tools to help financial institutions protect their IT security environment. MPD’s next-generation firewall capabilities provide deeper analysis and improved detection of modern threats, which makes it easier for institutions to enhance their security posture.

06 Dec 2021

Banks, Credit Unions, Security Jamie Davis 0 comment

How Layered Security Can Address Growing Cyberthreats

With the increasing complexity of cyberattacks, financial institutions need to implement more effective—and comprehensive—security measures. They need a variety of elements to create a layered approach to secure their data, infrastructure, and other resources from potential cyberthreats.

Many organizations rely on a castle-and-moat network security model where everyone inside the network is trusted by default. (Think of the network as the castle and the network perimeter as the moat.) No one outside the network is able to access data on the inside, but everyone inside the network can. However, security gaps may still exist in this model and others. The best approach to compensate for gaps is to surround the network with layers of security.

The basic “table stakes” for a layered security approach include a perimeter firewall with content filtering, email threat filters, an endpoint malware solution, and a robust patch management process. Banks and credit unions could also invest in additional and more sophisticated layers but each one will have associated acquisition and management costs, along with ongoing maintenance. So, it’s prudent for institutions to invest only in the number of layers/solutions they can competently manage.

Key Concerns

Today the top IT security concern for many organizations is ransomware. Due to the proactive measures many financial institutions have taken, the banking industry has fewer security breaches than health care and some other industries thus far. However, when a breach does happen to a financial institution, the impact is more costly than breaches occurring in other industries.

Four-Layer Security Formula

With these concerns in mind, here’s a four-layer “recipe” organizations can employ to improve their security posture:

Training and Testing: Using email phishing tests can serve as a good foundation for minimizing BEC and other social engineering threats.
Network Design: Institutions should refresh older networks to segment their components into different zones. It’s no longer sufficient to have servers, workstations, and printers sitting in one IP space together.
Domain Name System (DNS) filtering: DNS filtering prevents potentially damaging traffic from ever reaching the network. Because it proactively blocks threats, this makes it one of the most effective and affordable security layers institutions can apply.
Endpoint Protection: Institutions should have this type of protection on each of their endpoints, and the best endpoint protection tools have built-in ransomware solutions.

Other Important Considerations

It’s important to back up data regularly and ensure that those backups are well beyond the reach of ransomware and other threats. (Backups done to a local server that’s on-site and are still on the network may be susceptible to ransomware.) One way to address this issue is to have immutable backups, which are backup files that can’t be altered in any way and can deploy to production servers immediately in case of ransomware attacks or other data loss. Another option is to send backups to a cloud solution like Microsoft Azure Storage, which is affordable and easy to integrate because there are no servers to manage.

Another crucial element in security is Transport Layer Security/Secure Sockets Layer (TLS/SSL) encryption protocol, which can be somewhat of a double-edged sword. About 80 percent of website traffic is encrypted to protect it from unauthorized users during transmission. Traditional firewalls don’t have the ability to scrutinize traffic against a content filtering engine, which means savvy hackers can hide ransomware and other dangerous content inside. But firewalls with advanced features are capable of TLS/SSL inspection; they can decrypt content, analyze it for threats, and then re-encrypt the traffic before entering or leaving the network.

There’s an array of security solutions that institutions can implement to establish layered protection against cyber threats. For more insights about this topic, listen to our webinar on “Cyber Threats, Why You Need a Layered Approach.”

23 Nov 2021

Banks, Credit Unions, Security Brendan McGowan 0 comment

Importance of Security Layers

In the past, it wasn’t uncommon for organizations to maintain basic information security: a firewall, anti-malware software, and maybe a few other resources. But modern operating environments require financial institutions to go beyond limited measures and implement multiple security layers to protect their sensitive information, infrastructure, and other assets.

Today banks and credit unions have a variety of elements that comprise their computer networks, and these components require numerous security solutions for them to operate securely. There’s no such thing as having too many solutions—although some entities invest in more resources than they can competently manage. The most appropriate approach is for institutions to employ all the security layers they can afford to pay for and oversee effectively.

The security landscape has changed significantly over the years. With the evolution of technology, cybercriminals are launching more frequent and sophisticated attacks against organizations. (The bad guys have it easy; they only have to get it right once. Security professionals, on the other hand, have to get it right all the time.) Currently, the top security threats for financial institutions are a remote workforce, ransomware, and the Internet of Things devices like webcams, Amazon Alexa, and Google Chromecast.

Security Considerations

Financial institutions often select security products based on what their security posture requires to pass exams. But the emergence of new threats is motivating more institutions to select solutions not just based on examiner expectations, but to also consider what is essential for operational safety. Generally, the security products that institutions invest in are determined by their cost and ability to mitigate risk.

For the most part, the financial services industry is interested in solutions that require minimal management involvement and customization to be effective. The industry also tends to adopt solutions once they’ve reached a certain level of commoditization and are priced lower. For example, well-commoditized solutions like anti-virus agents and anti-ransomware tools allow institutions to protect against expensive threats for the minimum cost. An effective anti-malware agent—especially one with some specific anti-ransomware technology—is another essential layer for endpoint protection.

Ultimately, increased competition leads to technology innovation and consolidation. A good example of this is what’s happened with firewalls. Implementing a firewall used to equate to a simple router that separated public and private networks. Things evolved when people began adding dedicated appliances like intrusion detection and prevention systems, antivirus gateways, web content filters, and other technologies. Through commoditization, these different elements became consolidated into the firewall to create a unified threat management system. More recent innovations that allow institutions to inspect encrypted traffic and sandbox potentially hazardous traffic have ushered in the next-generation firewall.

Going Beyond Basic Requirements

A fundamental requirement for layered security is multi-factor authentication (MFA), which involves several elements for validating the identity of users. While some organizations have concerns about MFA negatively impacting user experience, the technology provides an advanced level of protection that strengthens security.

Transport Layer Security is now implemented to secure over 80% of web traffic. The TLS protocol is used to encrypt data between a web browser and a website. While this is great for user privacy, it prevents institutions from inspecting all user traffic for threats. Transport Layer Security (TLS) Inspection has become a more common—and critical—security tactic for financial institutions. TLS inspection allows institutions to decrypt and inspect TLS traffic, so they can filter out malicious information and protect their network.

The increased adoption of endpoint security and other innovative technologies is making it easier for financial institutions to implement a layered approach to security. Safe Systems offers a wide range of security solutions to help community banks and credit unions incorporate multiple levels of protection to enhance their security posture.

18 Aug 2021

Banks, Compliance, Credit Unions Jamie Davis 0 comment

How Banks and Credit Unions Are Responding to Emerging Cybersecurity Threats

Cybercriminals are always looking for new ways to bypass defense measures and exploit emerging weaknesses. Today, financial institutions are fending off security threats that are more ubiquitous, complex, and costly.

As more employees than ever before engage in remote work and online collaboration, this presents a host of potential security gaps. Unsecured home Wi-Fi networks, remote servers, mobile devices, a lack of encryption, and inadequate intrusion detection software are just a few of the factors that contribute to a spike in cyber attacks.

From an internal operations standpoint, it’s equally as important for financial institutions to secure data from basic human error, as 85 percent of data breaches involve a human element, according to the Verizon 2021 Data Breach Investigations Report. Employee awareness training can be the first (and best) defense against emerging cybersecurity threats like business email compromise which is designed to trick people into processing a payment or sharing valuable information.

Leveraging the Latest Technology

Next-generation firewalls (NGFWs) and cloud platforms can also support organizations’ efforts to combat cybersecurity threats. NGFWs offer advanced features that make risk easier to detect, manage and eliminate. SSL/TLS inspection can ensure that encrypted traffic is safe to transmit over the firewall. In addition, threat feeds can help firewalls effectively analyze traffic and route potentially dangerous traffic to a virtual “sandbox,” where it can be processed securely. Automated log analysis is then used to enhance the difficult job of managing voluminous logs and resolving security issues. To learn more about how these advanced features work, listen to our recorded webinar, “Firewall Chat: A Panel Discussion on the Technical Advances in Firewalls”.

Cloud computing is also providing benefits to financial institutions to enhance their security resources. While cloud technology is nothing new, innovations from major platforms like Microsoft, Amazon and Google offer enticing advantages to moving data and business processes into the cloud. But it’s important to keep in mind that employing cloud services requires institutions to use different security practices in order to minimize data breaches and other cyber threats.

Growing Need for Insurance and Expertise

As another developing trend, more companies are adding cyber insurance to their security toolbox. A cyber insurance policy can be an effective way to mitigate risk related to financial losses from cyber attacks. But with more cybercrime happening, organizations can expect to see higher premiums, decreased limits, and changes in exclusions for certain losses.

As cybersecurity threats become more frequent, sophisticated and expensive, financial institutions need to apply more vigilance and expertise to keep hackers at bay. Safe Systems can help ensure that community banks and credit unions have the technical resources they need to effectively address the latest security issues. Managed Perimeter Defense (MPD) offers a combination of professional IT solutions, including device monitoring and management, sandbox analysis, dynamic threat feed analysis, and SSL/TLS inspection.

15 Jul 2021

Banks, Credit Unions Safe Systems 0 comment

Cybersecurity Shouldn’t Be Keeping You Up at Night

There’s been a notable uptick in cyberattacks in recent years, some of which have drastically impacted institutions’ overall security. At Safe Systems, we believe that proactively protecting customer data will always be more cost effective than falling victim to malicious activity.

From malware and ransomware to managing security needs, we’ve got you covered on how best to protect your financial institution against any type of cybersecurity threat. After all, that’s why we’re here, right?

Make sure cybersecurity isn’t your institution’s weakest link by taking a look at our original blog post on the matter here.

11 Feb 2021

Banks, Credit Unions, Security Jordan Hendrix 0 comment

Using Advanced Firewall Features and Other Technologies to Strengthen Network Security

A traditional firewall can only do so much to protect a network against the invasive security threats that financial institutions are facing. Add to that, cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated and creative with their schemes, meaning banks and credit unions need more advanced defensive measures in place.

Malware and other cyber threats have been steadily increasing—especially against financial institutions, which are 300 times more likely than other companies to be targeted by a cyberattack, according to research by Boston Consulting Group. Institutions can capitalize on next-generation firewall (NGFW) features and other advanced technologies to increase the likelihood of warding off attacks, including:

Antimalware Scanning

Malware is intentionally designed for a perverse purpose: to damage a computer, server, client, or computer network. To keep malware at bay, banks and credit unions can use antimalware to thoroughly scan their computer network and detect and remove malicious ransomware, spyware, and other software that might be lurking on the system. Taking this proactive step can help institutions keep their network from being damaged, disrupted or compromised and overall improve the delivery of their services in a safe and secure manner.

Dynamic Threat Feeds

Threat intelligence data feeds can provide institutions with constantly updated information about potential sources of attack. Industry-specific feeds deliver up-to-date information on the latest security threats in the banking industry. Dynamic threat feeds make it easy for institutions to permit “good” network traffic in and “bad” traffic out while ensuring critical processes continue to work.

Dynamic threat feeds, essentially, take valuable parts of the information related to establishing connections and find similarities within them to act on potential or current threats. A key type of threat intelligence feed that institutions can implement are GEO-IP threat feeds. With this technology, a bank can map an IP address to the geographic location of an Internet-connected computing device. Then, they can analyze the Geo-IP data to detect threats from high-risk locations to improve their security posture. This analysis can be accomplished with processing times equal to less than a few milliseconds.

Another effective threat feed that institutions can use is IBM X-Force Exchange. This cloud-based threat intelligence platform allows banks to consume, share, and act on a variety of threat intelligences. IBM X-Force enables users to quickly research the latest security threats, gather actionable intelligence, consult with experts, and collaborate with peers. They can also integrate other tools to facilitate configuring feeds, providing a major benefit for smaller institutions with fewer resources. With dynamic threat feeds, banks and credit unions can have greater peace of mind with their firewall and security posture.

TLS/SSL Inspection

NGFWs offer capabilities that go beyond traditional firewalls, including inspecting TLS/SSL encrypted traffic. TLS/SSL technology helps protect online traffic; it creates an encrypted link between a web server and browser, ensuring the privacy of the data being transmitted. TLS/SSL inspection is important because it allows firewalls to scrutinize this encrypted web traffic and close holes in security. These security gaps could be exploited by would-be cybercriminals who attempt to use encrypted traffic for malware to circumvent the firewall’s inspections.

TLS/SSL traffic inspection allows institutions to decrypt traffic, inspect the decrypted payload for threats, then re-encrypt the traffic before it enters or leaves the network. Such deep content inspection can better protect institutions from internal and external risks. This makes TLS/SSL inspection the ideal defensive weapon against menacing malware and other security issues.

Sandboxing

Sandboxing can also help institutions augment their network security efforts. Traditional firewalls evaluate traffic based on static factors like where it originated, it is destination going, and the port being used. However, these are no longer sufficient for combating modern security threats. Sandboxing—physically or virtually segmenting a system, network, or entire environment—creates a secure location to test and neutralize potential hazards. Having a safe space to “detonate” payloads for analysis results in less risk and damage to the production environment, and, ultimately, enhances network security.

For more information about using advanced firewall features and other technology to strengthen network security, read our “Improving Security Posture Through Next-Generation Firewall Features” white paper.

04 Feb 2021

Banks, Credit Unions, Security Greg Batore 0 comment

Does Your Financial Institution Have the Right Security Layers in Place to Combat Today’s Threats?

In 2020, 80 percent of firms experienced an increase in cyberattacks, and the pandemic was at the root of a 238-percent spike in attacks on banks, according to Fintech News. In a world of ever-increasing cyberattacks, does your bank or credit union have the appropriate security layers in place to effectively thwart these threats?

There are some proven, preemptive measures that financial institutions should take, including:

Effective Log Analysis

Logs record every activity and event that occurs on a network, providing valuable clues about potential performance, compliance, and security issues. But it can be challenging for an institution to analyze, manage, and tailor all the log data that it receives—which can exceed millions of lines in just a 24-hour period. Without sufficient data analysis tools, information technology (IT) professionals are severely limited. They have to depend on their own processing capabilities to manually analyze data, which can be a labor-intensive, mistake-prone task.

Effectively managing log analysis has become more problematic with shifts in the security landscape: the expansion of security features, increase in firewall complexity, rapid emergence of new security threats, and constant growth in endpoints. This creates a situation that no security team can effectively manage on its own without some level of automated log collection and analysis.

With this technology, firewall logs are sent to a device that deftly collects and interprets the data. Information is then displayed in a format that is more readable, searchable, and useful for security engineers. While this process can go a long way toward improving the gathering of raw data, institutions can do even more to enhance their log management by building in additional security layers through the automated threat identification.

Log analysis automation equips security professionals to more effectively receive alerts about current and possible threats. Many banks and credit unions have limited personnel and expertise available to analyze their vast amount of traffic logs manually. But automated log analysis allows institutions to maximize their resources by leveraging more advanced technologies, like artificial intelligence (AI), cloud-based computing, and big data to collect alerts more efficiently.

Improved Education and Continuous Improvement

Staff training and education are also an important aspect of solidifying an institution’s security posture, and institutions can employ a variety of tactics to ensure their employees are better able to interpret and respond to alerts. Bank tellers, loan officers, and administrative staff all benefit from informative seminars, brochures, and other learning opportunities. Information security operations personnel can improve simply by calling on experienced colleagues to share their expertise in a more informal exchange of information. These combined efforts can help institutions minimize the number of threats and manage their operations more efficiently on a daily basis.

Financial institutions must also commit to continuous improvement in regard to their firewall security. While enhancing log analysis is not an exact science, there is value in institutions asking targeted questions to help determine the need for specific enhancements to help ensure that the most actionable and best information is being presented to the individuals who need to review it.

Integrating Advanced Technologies

Additionally, banks and credit unions should leverage next-generation firewall (NGFW) features and other advanced technologies – like dynamic threat feeds – to optimize their security initiatives, helping ensure they allow “good” traffic in and keep “bad” traffic out while maintaining critical processes.

NGFWs also enable financial institutions to perform functions beyond that of a traditional firewall, including deeper inspections of transport layer security (TLS) and secure socket layer (SSL) encrypted traffic. The practice of “sandboxing” to physically or virtually segment a system, network, or entire environment creates a secure location to test and neutralize potential threats.

Learn more about how your institution can incorporate the right security layers to combat today’s threats by downloading our “Improving Security Posture Through Next-Generation Firewall Features” white paper.

21 Sep 2020

Banks, Compliance, Credit Unions Tom Hinkel 0 comment

Three Often Overlooked Elements of an Effective and Compliant Incident Response Plan (IRP)

In today’s security environment, it’s not if a cybersecurity incident will impact your institution, but when and how big? That’s why having an effective and compliant incident response plan (IRP) is so important to ensure your institution is prepared for the unexpected and equipped to recover.

When a financial institution experiences a cyber incident, the information security officer (ISO), along with the incident response team, must assess the situation and determine if this incident has resulted (or might reasonably result) in exposure of non-public personal information (NPI). If the answer is “yes,” then the team must activate the IRP to contain and control the situation and ensure quick and efficient response and recovery. When activating an IRP, there are three key elements that we sometimes see financial institutions overlook:

1. Incident Response Team Participation

When building your incident response team, it is important to include representatives from each functional unit of the institution. Too often the incident response team consists of IT personnel only. While an incident might seem to be isolated to a certain department (like IT), there could be residual effects impacting other parts of the organization.

For example, let’s say you have an incident that seems to be limited to a group of customers who received a phishing email appearing to be from the institution asking them to click a link to change their ebanking password.

In this situation, you may be inclined to simply involve IT and deposit operation teams. However, because there could be a ripple effect that goes beyond that one incident, you’ll want to include other departments such as lending, human resources, and accounting. For instance, the customer could have a lending relationship or home equity line with the institution that might be impacted as well. Or, the customer could also be a vendor. Furthermore, with the increased possibility of pretexting during a social engineering attack, the Human Resources department may want to use the incident as an opportunity to conduct refresher training to ensure employees know how to verify customer information. As such, it’s important to have all your bases covered and include all functional units on the incident response team.

2. Designated Spokesperson and Social Media Monitoring

Once you’ve activated your plan, it’s important to understand that you cannot simply hope to contain the incident within your organization. A cyber incident may involve key external stakeholders including the Board and senior management, regulatory agencies, law enforcement, third-party service providers, insurance, legal, customers, and may even attract the attention of the media.

When an incident occurs, it is important to have designated spokespeople pre-selected to communicate with each external stakeholder that needs to be informed. For example, you’d want to have your IT admin in contact with the point person at your outsourced IT company because they most likely have a direct relationship with this vendor. However, you probably wouldn’t want that same person reaching out to regulators or customers. A member of senior management would be the best choice for that. In addition, you should designate one or more individuals to be your media contact. Don’t forget to have someone monitoring social media channels to ensure news about the incident isn’t spreading online potentially exposing you to reputational harm.

When developing an incident response plan, designating spokespeople to communicate with external stakeholders and monitoring online social media channels often gets overlooked because the main focus is usually on how the incident happened and how to fix it quickly. The moment the incident response plan is activated it is critical for the incident response team to assign these roles and keep these individuals updated with any interactions they may have with stakeholders.

3. Detailed Incident Documentation and Log Retention

It is imperative that the incident response team creates detailed documentation outlining everything that occurred from the time the event was first identified, even before it became classified as an incident. Again, this is often overlooked as the team engages in containment and control activities. However, regulators, insurance companies, third-party forensics companies, the Board, law enforcement, etc., will need full details when and if they are drawn into the incident. The documentation should detail who responded, what actions were taken, when each action was taken, (the timeline), and why and how (if known) the incident occurred.

Equally important is the retention of any data logs that might assist with the response and recovery phase. Often insurance carriers will need this information if they are involved, and forensic firms will definitely need it if they are drawn into the investigation phase.

We’ll dive deeper into security event logging and best practices for responding to a cyber incident in a future blog post.