Financial Services Industry – Page 2 – Computer Security Articles

Credit to Author: Matthew Finnegan| Date: Mon, 08 Aug 2022 03:01:00 -0700

As regulators hand out hundreds of millions of dollars in fines for record-keeping failures related to the use of social messaging platforms such as WhatsApp, the finance industry faces a choice: properly enforce bans on the use of these apps or find ways to make them compliant.

“The explosion of new electronic communications channels — and the pervasive use of these — raises lots of red flags for the regulators,” said Anthony Diana, a partner at law firm Reed Smith’s Tech & Data Group. “The fear is that, if bad things are happening, they’re happening on these personal apps, not on the sanctioned communication channels that are surveilled.”

Anthony Diana, a partner at law firm Reed Smith’s Tech & Data Group.
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ComputerWorld Independent

Will new EU crypto rules change how ransomware is played?

July 20, 2022 admin Financial Services Industry, mobile payment, Security, Technology Industry

Credit to Author: Evan Schuman| Date: Wed, 20 Jul 2022 05:55:00 -0700

Cryptocurrency has always been the payment method of choice for bad guys. Get hit with an enterprise ransomware attack and plan to pay? You’ll need crypto. The key reason cyberthieves love cryptocurrency so much is that it is far harder to trace payments.

That is why a move being attempted by the European Union has so much potential. The EU — in a move that will likely be mimicked by many other regional regulatory forces, including in the United States — is putting in place tracking requirements for all cryptocurrency.

If it is successful, and the EU has an excellent track record on precisely these kinds of changes, cryptocurrency may quickly fade as the thief’s payment of choice.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Are banks quietly refusing reimbursements to fraud victims?

July 5, 2022 admin Financial Services Industry, mobile payment, Security

Credit to Author: Evan Schuman| Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2022 03:00:00 -0700

There are some scary reports popping up that various major financial institutions no longer credit back all fraudulent transactions, even when victims file a police report. If true, it’s a disastrous move that will painfully hurt the institutions.

Let’s look a recent New York Times report on the problem:

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ComputerWorld Independent

Why the Fed is considering a cash-backed cryptocurrency

February 11, 2020 admin BlockChain, Financial Services Industry, Government, IT Leadership, Mobile, Security, software development

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Tue, 11 Feb 2020 03:00:00 -0800

The Federal Reserve is investigating the potential of a central bank digital currency (CBDC) as the backbone for a new, secure real-time payments and settlements system.

The move toward a form of government-backed digital currency is being driven by Fintech firms and a banking industry already piloting or planning to pilot cash-backed digital tokens, according to Lael Brainard, a member of the U.S. Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors.

“Today, it can take a few days to get access to your funds. A real-time retail payments infrastructure would ensure the funds are available immediately – to pay utility bills or split the rent with roommates, or for small business owners to pay their suppliers,” said Brainard, who serves as chair of the committees overseeing Financial Stability and Payments, Clearing and Settlements.

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ComputerWorld Independent

Amid privacy and security failures, digital IDs advance

January 6, 2020 admin BlockChain, Emerging Technology, Financial Services Industry, Government IT, Identity Management, privacy, Security

Credit to Author: Lucas Mearian| Date: Mon, 06 Jan 2020 03:00:00 -0800

Frustration over a growing number of privacy and security failuresin recent years is driving the creation of digital identities controlled only by those whose information they contain.

Known as “self-sovereign identities,” the digital IDs will be used by consumers, businesses, their workers and governments over the next few years to verify everything from credit worthiness and college diplomas to licenses and business-to-business credentials.

“We are slowly graduating from crawling to walking. It takes one to two years ’til we have reliable capabilities to spark meaningful decentralized identity adoption,” said Homan Farahmand, a senior research director at Gartner. “A major non-technical hurdle is for organizations to learn the concept and take the necessary steps to appropriately adapt their business processes to decentralized identity ecosystems.”

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ComputerWorld Independent

Windows vulnerability

January 3, 2020 admin Financial Services Industry, Security

Credit to Author: Sharky| Date: Fri, 03 Jan 2020 03:00:00 -0800

Pilot fish is working at a bank, but it’s the 1970s, and ATMs are far from common. What this bank has is an after-hours teller window, available from 3 to 7 p.m. It’s located in a small enclosure accessible from the street, and its operation involves a human teller working behind a reinforced-concrete wall.

When the bank develops an online customer system, the night teller is chosen as the testing ground, because the new system will allow for instant posting of deposits instead of waiting for the next day. And fish, a computer science major, will serve as teller/guinea pig.

But first, a new window has to be constructed, right next to the two-story glass façade of the bank. The work includes putting the cabling inside heavy steel pipes to ensure that no one can tap into them.

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