Fortinet issues top five cybersecurity predictions for financial industry

“The financial industry continues to be a prime target given the sensitive nature of its data that is extremely valuable on the online black market,” said Peerapong Jongvibool, vice president for Southeast Asia and Hong Kong at Fortinet. 

“Cyber-criminals are also capitalising on new ways to exploit increasingly complex network environments in [financial-services institutions] and developing new techniques to bypass security and evade detection. As the attacks grow in both number and complexity, financial-services institutions will have to prepare better to detect and mitigate threats in order to protect their organisations.”

Fortinet has offered its top five cybersecurity predictions for the financial-services industry in 2017. 

First is the need to secure the cloud further. 

Next is the adoption of two-factor authentication, which combines passwords the user already knows with another type of authentication that is connected to something the user has, for instance a one-time PIN (personal identitification number) sent to his or her mobile phone.

Another is securing the Internet of Things. The IoT’s prowess is impossible to ignore with 24 billion connected devices expected to be installed across the world by 2020, according to Gartner. The insurance industry in particular is already relying on IoT to align driving behaviour with premium rates by leveraging data from in-vehicle telecommunication devices in some countries. The banking industry is also expected to improve the experience for retail customers with IoT initiatives such as personalised customer rewards.

Fourth, governments will become more involved. 

Finally, as cybersecurity solutions evolve, so too will the complexity of the attacks being developed. In 2017, financial-services organizations should consider deploying a security fabric architecture that provides awareness and visibility into all security elements, integrates them into a single, operationalised defence and response system, and allows for centralised orchestration and automation through a single management platform. This fabric should also provide open APIs (application program interfaces) to enable seamless integration and intelligence sharing with other third-party network and security solutions.