Financial Cybersecurity Risk Management

Understand critical cybersecurity and risk perspectives, insights, and tools for the leaders of complex financial systems and markets. This book offers guidance for decision makers and helps establish a framework for communication between cyber leaders and front-line professionals. Information is provided to help in the analysis of cyber challenges and choosing between risk treatment options. Financial cybersecurity is a complex, systemic risk challenge that includes technological and operational elements. The interconnectedness of financial systems and markets creates dynamic, high-risk environments where organizational security is greatly impacted by the level of security effectiveness of partners, counterparties, and other external organizations. The result is a high-risk environment with a growing need for cooperation between enterprises that are otherwise direct competitors. There is a new normal of continuous attack pressures that produce unprecedented enterprise threats that must be met with an array of countermeasures. Financial Cybersecurity Risk Management explores a range of cybersecurity topics impacting financial enterprises. This includes the threat and vulnerability landscape confronting the financial sector, risk assessment practices and methodologies, and cybersecurity data analytics. Governance perspectives, including executive and board considerations, are analyzed as are the appropriate control measures and executive risk reporting. What You’ll Learn Analyze the threat and vulnerability landscape confronting the financial sector Implement effective technology risk assessment practices and methodologies Craft strategies to treat observed risks in financial systemsImprove the effectiveness of enterprise cybersecurity capabilities Evaluate critical aspects of cybersecurity governance, including executive and board oversight Identify significant cybersecurity operational challenges Consider the impact of the cybersecurity mission across the enterpriseLeverage cybersecurity regulatory and industry standards to help manage financial services risksUse cybersecurity scenarios to measure systemic risks in financial systems environmentsApply key experiences from actual cybersecurity events to develop more robust cybersecurity architectures Who This Book Is For Decision makers, cyber leaders, and front-line professionals, including: chief risk officers, operational risk officers, chief information security officers, chief security officers, chief information officers, enterprise risk managers, cybersecurity operations directors, technology and cybersecurity risk analysts, cybersecurity architects and engineers, and compliance officers

Cyber-attacks on financial institutions and financial market infrastructures are becoming more common and more sophisticated. Risk awareness has been increasing, firms actively manage cyber risk and invest in cybersecurity, and to some extent transfer and pool their risks through cyber liability insurance policies. This paper considers the properties of cyber risk, discusses why the private market can fail to provide the socially optimal level of cybersecurity, and explore how systemic cyber risk interacts with other financial stability risks. Furthermore, this study examines the current regulatory frameworks and supervisory approaches, and identifies information asymmetries and other inefficiencies that hamper the detection and management of systemic cyber risk. The paper concludes discussing policy measures that can increase the resilience of the financial system to systemic cyber risk.

This paper highlights the emerging supervisory practices that contribute to effective cybersecurity risk supervision, with an emphasis on how these practices can be adopted by those agencies that are at an early stage of developing a supervisory approach to strengthen cyber resilience. Financial sector supervisory authorities the world over are working to establish and implement a framework for cyber risk supervision. Cyber risk often stems from malicious intent, and a successful cyber attack—unlike most other sources of risk—can shut down a supervised firm immediately and lead to systemwide disruptions and failures. The probability of attack has increased as financial systems have become more reliant on information and communication technologies and as threats have continued to evolve.

Cyber risk has emerged as a key threat to financial stability, following recent attacks on financial institutions. This paper presents a novel documentation of cyber risk around the world for financial institutions by analyzing the different types of cyber incidents (data breaches, fraud and business disruption) and identifying patterns using a variety of datasets. The other novel contribution that is outlined is a quantitative framework to assess cyber risk for the financial sector. The framework draws on a standard VaR type framework used to assess various types of stability risk and can be easily applied at the individual country level. The framework is applied in this paper to the available cross-country data and yields illustrative aggregated losses for the financial sector in the sample across a variety of scenarios ranging from 10 to 30 percent of net income.

Cybersecurity risk continues to grow both in complexity and severity and is a function of an increasingly open and interconnected cyber and financial ecosystem. The South African financial system has a long history of incorporating technology and as for many financial systems across the globe, digitalization has become a strategic priority. For risk management to keep pace with the dynamic nature of cyber threats and threat agents, systemically important financial institutions (SIFIs) have made substantial investments in cyber resilience programs (e.g., establishing cyber strategies, frameworks, and governance structures). Consistent with many jurisdictions, and partly a result of widespread remote working arrangements implemented in response to the global pandemic, cybersecurity threats to financial stability increased. However, high standards of risk management meant threats did not materialize into significant losses and/or disruptions.

A comprehensive guide that will give you hands-on experience to study and overcome financial cyber threats Key FeaturesProtect your financial environment with cybersecurity practices and methodologiesIdentify vulnerabilities such as data manipulation and fraudulent transactionsProvide end-to-end protection within organizationsBook Description Organizations have always been a target of cybercrime. Hands-On Cybersecurity for Finance teaches you how to successfully defend your system against common cyber threats, making sure your financial services are a step ahead in terms of security. The book begins by providing an overall description of cybersecurity, guiding you through some of the most important services and technologies currently at risk from cyber threats. Once you have familiarized yourself with the topic, you will explore specific technologies and threats based on case studies and real-life scenarios. As you progress through the chapters, you will discover vulnerabilities and bugs (including the human risk factor), gaining an expert-level view of the most recent threats. You'll then explore information on how you can achieve data and infrastructure protection. In the concluding chapters, you will cover recent and significant updates to procedures and configurations, accompanied by important details related to cybersecurity research and development in IT-based financial services. By the end of the book, you will have gained a basic understanding of the future of information security and will be able to protect financial services and their related infrastructures. What you will learnUnderstand the cyber threats faced by organizationsDiscover how to identify attackersPerform vulnerability assessment, software testing, and pentestingDefend your financial cyberspace using mitigation techniques and remediation plansImplement encryption and decryptionUnderstand how Artificial Intelligence (AI) affects cybersecurityWho this book is for Hands-On Cybersecurity for Finance is for you if you are a security architect, cyber risk manager, or pentester looking to secure your organization. Basic understanding of cybersecurity tools and practices will help you get the most out of this book.

Based on technical assistance to central banks by the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department and Information Technology Department, this paper examines fintech and the related area of cybersecurity from the perspective of central bank risk management. The paper draws on findings from the IMF Article IV Database, selected FSAP and country cases, and gives examples of central bank risks related to fintech and cybersecurity. The paper highlights that fintech- and cybersecurity-related risks for central banks should be addressed by operationalizing sound internal risk management by establishing and strengthening an integrated risk management approach throughout the organization, including a dedicated risk management unit, ongoing sensitizing and training of Board members and staff, clear reporting lines, assessing cyber resilience and security posture, and tying risk management into strategic planning.. Given the fast-evolving nature of such risks, central banks could make use of timely and regular inputs from external experts.

Exploring the negative social impact of cyber-attacks, this book takes a closer look at the challenges faced by both the public and private sectors of the financial industry. It is widely known amongst senior executives in both sectors that cybercrime poses a real threat, however effective collaboration between individual financial institutions and the public sector into detecting, monitoring and responding to cyber-attacks remains limited. Addressing this problem, the authors present the results from a series of interviews with cybersecurity professionals based in Canada in order to better understand the potential risks and threats that financial institutions are facing in the digital age. Offering policy recommendations for improving cybersecurity protection measures within financial institutions, and enhancing the sharing of information between the public and private sector, this book is a timely and invaluable read for those researching financial services, cybercrime and risk management, as well as finance professionals interested in cybersecurity.