The Visible and Invisible Risks of Cryptocurrency for Banks and Credit Unions
The Visible and Invisible Risks of Cryptocurrency for Banks and Credit Unions
The allure of investing early in the “next big thing” has led to increased interest in crypto investment. As a new industry, it is highly unregulated compared to other types of investments and banking. While there is potential for a big win, there is strong potential for a big loss. As a bank or credit union, here’s what you need to know to protect your institution.
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The Visible and Invisible Risks of Cryptocurrency for Banks and Credit Unions - PDF
The Visible and Invisible Risks of Cryptocurrency for Banks and Credit Unions
The allure of investing early in the “next big thing” has led to increased interest in crypto investment. As a new industry, it is highly unregulated compared to other types of investments and banking. While there is potential for a big win, there is strong potential for a big lose. As a bank or credit union, here’s what you need to know to protect your institution.
Aunalytics President Rich Carlton to Deliver Keynote Address at Virtual Fintech Conference, and CMO Katie Horvath to Present at Bankers Education Summit in April
Leading Data Platform Provider Will Demonstrate Aunalytics Daybreak for Financial Services at National and Statewide Industry Events Attended by Bankers and Credit Unions
South Bend, IN (March 30, 2022) – Aunalytics, a leading data platform company delivering Insights-as-a-Service for enterprise businesses, announced today that President Rich Carlton will deliver a keynote address at the Washington Bankers Association Virtual Fintech Conference on April 20, and participate in a panel at the conference on April 21. Aunalytics Chief Marketing Officer Katie Horvath will also present in April, at the Michigan Bankers Association Bankers Education Summit and Trade Show. Both Carlton and Horvath will discuss how mid-market bankers and credit unions can increase market share with AI-driven personalized interactions with customers and members.
Aunalytics will participate in multiple industry events in April, showcasing DaybreakTM for Financial Services, an advanced data analytics solution for community banks and credit unions:
- Ohio Bankers League Security & Technology Conference, April 6-8
- FIS Emerald, April 11-13
- Michigan Bankers Association BEST (Bankers Education Summit & Trade Show) Conference, April 12-14
- Cornerstone League IMPACT 2022: Annual Meeting & Council Forum, April 20-22 (Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma credit unions)
- Washington Bankers Association Virtual Fintech Conference, April 20-21
- Minnesota Credit Union Network ACCELERATE 22 Annual Conference, April 21-22
Daybreak for Financial Services enables midsize financial institutions to gain customer intelligence and grow their lifetime value, predict churn, determine which products to introduce to customers and when, based upon deep learning models that are informed by data. Built from the ground up, Daybreak for Financial Services is a cloud-native data platform that enables users to focus on critical business outcomes. The solution seamlessly integrates and cleanses data for accuracy, ensures data governance, and employs artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) driven analytics to glean customer intelligence and timely actionable insights that drive strategic value.
“Midmarket financial institutions can thrive by redefining the local experience and digitally transforming how they operate,” said Horvath. “The ability to target, discover and offer the right services to the right people, at the right time, improves customer relationships, delivers new products and services through data-driven campaigns, and accelerates competitive advantage. Consumers demand digital experiences and view personalization as the default standard for engagement. Personalized marketing in a digital world matters more than ever before, especially for midmarket banks that have traditionally relied upon hometown, white glove service to win customers. Using Aunalytics Daybreak for Financial Services, midsize banks can now benefit from the advanced analytics that their large national counterparts have employed, to make personalized interactions data driven. This enables mid-market financial institutions to target-market more efficiently, reach high-value customers with the right product offering, and win business away from competitors to expand value. We look forward to meeting with bankers and credit unions at a variety of industry events in April and demonstrating how Daybreak for Financial Services can help them strengthen their position in regional markets and compete more effectively.”
Tweet this: .@Aunalytics Aunalytics President to Deliver Keynote at Fintech Conference & CMO to Present at Bankers Education Summit in April #FinancialServices #Banks #CreditUnions #Dataplatform #DataAnalytics #Dataintegration #Dataaccuracy #AdvancedAnalytics #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Masterdatamanagement #MDM #DataScientist #MachineLearning #ML #DigitalTransformation #FinancialServices
About Aunalytics
Aunalytics is a data platform company delivering answers for your business. Named a Digital Innovator by analyst firm Intellyx, and selected for the prestigious Inc. 5000 list, Aunalytics provides Insights-as-a-Service to answer enterprise and mid-sized companies’ most important IT and business questions. The Aunalytics® cloud-native data platform is built for universal data access, advanced analytics and AI while unifying disparate data silos into a single golden record of accurate, actionable business information. Its DaybreakTM industry intelligent data mart combined with the power of the Aunalytics data platform provides industry-specific data models with built-in queries and AI to ensure access to timely, accurate data and answers to critical business and IT questions. Through its side-by-side digital transformation model, Aunalytics provides on-demand scalable access to technology, data science, and AI experts to seamlessly transform customers’ businesses. To learn more contact us at +1 855-799-DATA or visit Aunalytics at https://www.aunalytics.com or on Twitter and LinkedIn.
PR Contact:
Denise Nelson
The Ventana Group for Aunalytics
(925) 858-5198
dnelson@theventanagroup.com
2022 Ohio Bankers League Security & Technology Conference
2022 Ohio Bankers League Security & Technology Conference
Embassy Suites by Hilton Columbus Airport, Columbus, OH
Aunalytics to Attend 2022 OBL Security & Technology Conference
Aunalytics is excited to attend the 2022 Ohio Banker’s League Security & Technology Conference. Aunalytics is excited to showcase our expertise in Enterprise Security and banking analytics. Daybreak™ for Financial Services enables community banks to use transactional data to more effectively identify and deliver new services and solutions for their customers so they can make smarter decisions and better compete with large national banks.
Why Cybersecurity Should Be a Top Priority for Mid-market Businesses
Cybersecurity should be a top priority for mid-market organizations. With remote working at its highest, most businesses now hold some form of sensitive data in the cloud and workers access company data from remote locations. Zero trust security principles based upon a user’s credentials instead of a user’s location within a firewalled company facility are the new norm.
At the same time, the number of cybersecurity attacks has increased to its highest levels ever. It has been reported that ransomware attacks increased over 90% in 2021. Ransomware has hit new levels of sophistication, with demands for payment skyrocketing into the tens of millions. McKinsey reports that attacks are motivated by:
- Vulnerabilities posed by pandemic weary organizations and workers logging in from unsecured home networks
- Ever advancing connectivity driven by advancing digitization
- Threat actors are now “dwelling” undetected within victims’ environments (instead of using a smash and grab approach) to better understand where the highest value data and information lives and then selling that to the highest bidder
- More companies have been forced to pay ransoms to regain control of their networks and data, so hackers are further incentivized to innovate on this lucrative threat
Companies need to ensure they remain resilient by focusing on ransomware prevention, preparation, response, and recovery strategies. This is a journey—threats continue to evolve and staying ready means staying up to date with new threats of increasing sophistication, cyber security strategies, and best practices. Over time, increasing cyber maturity creates a resilient environment where attacks may still occur but do not have the same impact they would otherwise.
Mid-market businesses need expert skills in cloud security and data security, which is not standard in mid-market IT department skillsets. Keeping servers in a closet guarded by your IT department is extremely risky for data protection. With constantly looming cyber threats, organizations should make cybersecurity best practices a top business priority—and Aunalytics is here to help.
Financial institutions are frequently targeted in cyberattacks—here’s how to protect your bank or credit union
Financial institutions consistently have been the most cyberattacked industry for the past decade. It is no surprise, given that banking enterprises hold large volumes of sensitive data about people, companies, and governments, and their transactional business revolves around massive volumes of money transfer. Hackers will continue to strike with increasing sophistication since the data held by financial institutions is of high value with the potential for extremely lucrative financial gains if stolen. For example, the Europe-based Carbanak and Cobalt malware campaigns targeted more than 100 financial institutions in greater than 40 countries during five years from 2013-2018, and the criminal profits yielded over a billion Euros.
Attacks are increasingly sophisticated and cyber criminals continue to invest in new and complex criminal strategies and campaigns. Hackers in banking often take advantage of the interdependencies of financial institutions to service products such as credit cards and mortgages for other banks. From one bank breach, the cyber cartels jump to the partnered financial institution to steal its data as well.
In some types of cyberattacks, criminals make slight changes to data, which may not be immediately detectable. Because nothing is stolen at the time, users may not recognize the attack. However, once the criminals gain access to this data, they can manipulate algorithms in the system for their own financial gain. Timestamp manipulation is a newer strategy, whereby criminals have found that they are more likely to evade detection if they manipulate time for an otherwise valid transaction. Changing timestamps can alter the value of capital and trades. Because the parties to the transaction appear to be legitimate, this type of fraud is harder to detect.
Other criminals outright steal data for financial gain by selling it, hold data hostage for ransom profit, or pilfer intellectual property such as an organization’s competitive strategy and business plans to sell to interested parties. But the main goal in banking cyber-criminal activity is direct profit from a modern-day bank heist—stealing money from the bank.
Despite the increasing complexity of cyberattacks against financial institutions, there are some tools and best practices that banks and credit unions can use to protect themselves from these threats:
- Continuously update security technology and protocols as threats evolve and adapt with the help of a dedicated full-time security team.
- Employ 24/7/365 monitoring with remote remediation to quickly stop attacks in their tracks
- Monitor endpoint devices to stop attacks before they hit networks.
- Monitor cloud security including application use across the financial institution.
- Monitor email and Office 365 using tools specially designed to thwart attacks on these platforms, such as proactively recognizing and removing phishing scams.
- Have a dedicated security team and SOC, or hire an expert outside managed security services firm that embeds tools, technology and 24/7/365 monitoring to serve as your SOC.
- Push frequent patches so that user devices are equipped with the latest security protections.
- Adopt deep learning or AI monitoring, mitigation and context investigation that can more quickly identify threats.
- Encrypt data so that it is not compromised even if a breach occurs.
- Use multi-factor authentication to protect against unauthorized access.
- Instruct employees and customers to only access bank data in a secure location over a non-public Internet connection.
- Train employees on cybersecurity threats quarterly.
- Develop a solid business recovery plan for when an attack occurs.
Learn more about how Aunalytics Advanced Security helps protect financial institutions, and businesses in other highly regulated industries, from cyberattacks.
Catalyst University 2022
Catalyst University 2022
Radisson Kalamazoo, Kalamazoo, MI
Aunalytics to Attend 2022 Catalyst University
Aunalytics is excited to once again attend Southwest Michigan First’s Catalyst University 2022 in Kalamazoo, MI. Aunalytics is participating as a speaker sponsor this year, and is pleased to present Chip Heath, best-selling co-author and professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business, teaching courses on business strategy and organizations. He will be speaking about how to translate numbers into things our brains can comprehend and use to tell compelling stories.
Aunalytics Cites Cybersecurity Best Practices for Financial Services as Attacks Rise 118% in 2021
Secure Managed Services Provider Protects Community Banks and Credit Unions as Cybercriminals Double Down on Efforts to Breach Financial Data, Compromise Accounts, and Profit Illegally
South Bend, IN (December 14, 2021) – Aunalytics, a leading data platform company delivering Insights-as-a-Service for enterprise businesses, today announced several cybersecurity best practices for financial services firms, including community banks and credit unions. This guidance follows new data showing hackers will continue to strike these organizations with increasing sophistication, targeting the high value data held by these organizations.
For the past six years, the finance sector has been ranked number one as the most cyberattacked industry. In 2020, attacks against banks and other financial institutions climbed an incredible 238% followed by a further impressive 118% increase in 2021. One example includes Europe-based Carbanak and Cobalt malware campaigns which targeted more than 100 financial institutions in more than 40 countries during five years, yielding criminal profits of more than a billion Euros.
According to the 2021 Modern Bank Heists 4.0 survey, the most common types of attacks hitting the financial services sector in 2020 and 2021 included server attacks, data theft and ransomware cases. It was also found that 57% of surveyed financial institutions revealed an increase in wire transfer fraud, 54% had experienced destructive attacks, 41% had suffered brokerage account take-overs, 51% experienced attacks on target market strategy data, 38% suffered attacks originating from hackers accessing trusted supply chain partners to gain entry into the bank, and 41% had become victim to manipulated timestamps resulting in fund theft.
Increasing the challenge for financial institutions is the fact that the current unemployment rate for IT security professionals is approximately 0%. The scarcity of highly skilled security professionals is compounded by the huge volume of emerging threats. As a result, financial institutions are struggling to keep up with the ever-increasing threat landscape. Digitalization in commerce is driving the need for continuously adapting and evolving skills and knowledge for IT security.
Best Practices for the Defense Against Cyber Threats
As a specialist in secure managed services, the experts at Aunalytics have reviewed the top actions necessary to secure IT, administrative, and environments touching the consumer in the financial services space to prioritize the most important areas that should be considered when securing these businesses against a cyberattack. The following best practices include:
- Continuously updating security technology and protocols as threats evolve and adapt. This means deploying a dedicated full-time security team – not an overworked IT department handling system stability and help desk, while also trying to keep abreast of the latest security threats and technologies, piecing together security tools as a solution. This is not a solution.
- Employment of 24/7/365 monitoring with remote remediation to quickly stop attacks in their tracks.
- Monitoring endpoint devices to stop attacks before they hit networks. User devices are the most likely entry point for attackers to compromise a financial institution due to the high propensity for innocent user error opening doors.
- Monitoring cloud security including application use across the financial institution to be on the lookout for atypical user behavior signaling an attack.
- Monitoring email and Office 365 using tools specially designed to thwart attacks on these platforms, such as expertly recognizing and removing phishing scams before employees have an opportunity to unleash horrible consequences with a rogue mistaken click.
- Having a dedicated security team and SOC, or hire an expert outside managed security services firm that embeds tools, technology and 24/7/365 monitoring to serve as an SOC. This is a must for financial institutions.
- Pushing frequent patches so that user devices are equipped with the latest security protections.
- Adopting deep learning or AI monitoring, mitigation and context investigation that can more quickly identify threats.
- Encrypting data so that it is not compromised even if a breach occurs.
- Using multi-factor authentication to protect against unauthorized access.
- Instructing employees and customers to only access bank data in a secure location over a non-public Internet connection.
- Training employees on cybersecurity threats quarterly.
- Developing a solid business recovery plan for when an attack occurs.
“The challenge with cyber threats is daunting because they can enter the business environment from any number of areas, making comprehensive, multi-layer security strategies and implementations a must,” said Katie Horvath, CMO, Aunalytics. “However, by implementing this recommended regiment of protections, organizations can significantly reduce the risk of a successful attack, safeguarding client data and the organization’s long-term viability.”
Tweet this: .@Aunalytics cites cybersecurity best practices for financial services as attacks rise 118% in 2021 #Dataplatform #Dataanalytics #Dataintegration #Dataaccuracy #ArtificialIntelligence #AI #Masterdatamanagement #MDM #DataScientist #MachineLearning #ML #DigitalTransformation #FinancialServices
About Aunalytics
Aunalytics is a data platform company delivering answers for your business. Aunalytics provides Insights-as-a-Service to answer enterprise and mid-sized companies’ most important IT and business questions. The Aunalytics® cloud-native data platform is built for universal data access, advanced analytics and AI while unifying disparate data silos into a single golden record of accurate, actionable business information. Its DaybreakTM industry intelligent data mart combined with the power of the Aunalytics data platform provides industry-specific data models with built-in queries and AI to ensure access to timely, accurate data and answers to critical business and IT questions. Through its side-by-side digital transformation model, Aunalytics provides on-demand scalable access to technology, data science, and AI experts to seamlessly transform customers’ businesses. To learn more contact us at +1 855-799-DATA or visit Aunalytics at https://www.aunalytics.com or on Twitter and LinkedIn.
PR Contact:
Denise Nelson
The Ventana Group for Aunalytics
(925) 858-5198
dnelson@theventanagroup.com
