Finance industry vulnerable to supply chain weakness

Like any business, financial companies are only as secure as the weakest link in their supply chain. If a third-party vendor is vulnerable, so is your company.

Banks, credit unions, investment companies, and others in the financial sector must remain compliant with Sarbanes-Oxley, Gramm-Leach-Bliley, and other regulatory guidelines. In the United States and around the world, network connections that are not secure and inadequate IT protection tools can lead to lost data and regulatory non-compliance.

Poor cybersecurity practices add up to major issues as weak security disrupts business here and abroad, including:

• The mammoth Equifax data breach continues to unfold. Recently Equifax upwardly revised its estimate of the number of people impacted by its loss of personal data to approximately 148 million consumers. Equifax continues to suffer extensive legal repercussions and reputation damage.
• In Italy, approximately 400,000 banking clients of UniCredit suffered a loss of their personal data when hackers gained access through a third party provider.  A lax security environment coupled with an insecure third-party contractor opened a backdoor for bad actors.
• Closer to home, even the agency tasked with regulating the US finance industry, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) revealed in 2017 that it suffered a vulnerability in its Electronic Data Gathering, Analysis, and Retrieval (EDGAR) program.  EDGAR is an automated system that collects and indexes the SEC filings of regulated companies. In a press release, the SEC noted the vulnerability “may have provided the basis for illicit gain through trading.”

As disruptive new technology and business interests unsettle the traditional financial sector, network security gaps occur through inattention, legacy IT systems, and unmonitored third-party IT support. Finance IT tech support, operating independently of its clients, can easily introduce unintended vulnerabilities that leave open windows for hackers.

Plugging the security gapes in finance IT

As the war between hackers and IT security specialists escalates, network protection is critical for financial institutions because their network is both their asset and their intellectual property. Providing compliant financial services and storing sensitive consumer data requires a secure remote access platform that captures and resolves gaps, poor practices, credentialing, and the need for audits.

When you look for a secure platform, investigate the availability of tools and capabilities that include:

• Streamlined access management that reduces institutional burdens, but provides standardized, secure remote access for financial organizations and their IT vendors.
• High-definition audit tools to provide real-time updates on users, remote desktop protocol (RDP) recordings, and compliance verifications.
• Two-factor authentication to enforce secure access.

Your network is only as strong as its weakest link.  When you need to reduce liability and boost compliance, talk to us about our secure remote access platform designed specifically to meet the needs of financial organizations and their IT vendors.

About SecureLink

Our sole focus is secure third-party remote access. For highly regulated enterprise organizations, SecureLink Enterprise has pioneered a secure remote access platform. SecureLink for enterprise allows an organization to identify, control, and audit third-party vendors. For vendors, SecureLink is the gold standard remote access support platform because it is easy, efficient, and ensures compliance and reduces liability when supporting customers.