Banking has changed. In the past, financial institutions outsourced their technology. They had large consulting firms creating, managing, and maintaining their back-end systems. Although banks would have knowledge of the systems in place, they wouldn’t be running them on a day-to-day basis. That was the consultants’ responsibility. Recent years have seen a significant shift in the financial sector.
Every year, 2%-5% of the global GDP, or US$800 billion-US$2 trillion is being laundered across the globe. That’s almost equivalent to the GDP of Canada (1,643.40 billion USD in 2020) or Italy ($1,886.45 USD in 2020). Neither the record-breaking heat, nor the intense floods experienced around the world this summer seem to have stopped financial criminals from inventing new ways to hide illegal sources of their income.
The security landscape is always changing. New features are coming out all the time, but often backward compatibility is maintained too. What this means is that while the new features may be present and active by default, it's possible for users to be completely unaware of them and continue using the legacy functionality.
In an article posted on the organization’s website, the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CISI.org) reported that, as of January 2019, the United States had 314,000 more available cybersecurity positions than it had trained professionals available to fill them. That was an increase of over 50% since 2015.
In a security advisory, Microsoft has warned that malicious hackers are exploiting an unpatched vulnerability in Windows to launch targeted attacks against organisations. The security hole, dubbed CVE-2021-40444, is a previously unknown remote code execution vulnerability in MSHTML, a core component of Windows which helps render web-based content. According to Microsoft, attacks exploiting the vulnerability have targeted companies via boobytrapped Microsoft Office documents.
Third parties are a necessary part of your enterprise. They are your vendors, your suppliers, your contractors, and your partners. Without them, you can’t do business. Third parties provide cloud services, store sensitive data, and provide other important services. Unfortunately, third parties are also a major source of cyber risk. Cybercriminals often target third-party providers to target their clients’ data and networks, such as the notorious SolarWinds breach at the end of 2020.
Modern-day industrial and critical infrastructure organizations rely heavily on the operational technology (OT) environment to produce their goods and services. Beyond traditional IT operations that utilize servers, routers, PCs and switches, these organizations also rely on OT, such as programmable logic controllers (PLCs), distributed control systems (DCSs) and human machine interfaces (HMIs) to run their physical plants and factories.
