Targeted Attackers

Quiet, Prepared and Invisible Attackers

Recent incidents of cyber attacks on financial institutions, JP Morgan and others, appear to be under targeted cyber-attacks. That is, the attackers are quiet, prepared and they are invisible at least for now. And it isn’t as if Chase hasn’t invested in threat protection. This year alone, it plans to spend more than $250 million on cybersecurity, according to a letter to investors from April.

One recurring theme - the attackers research and hit hard at the weakest links of the victims.

Know Your Enemy and Know Yourself

Know Your Attackers (Threats)

Publicly funded or subsidized bodies (like CERT) can have a more proactive and collaborative role to play for the communities. They can research and patrol on Internet for sharing preventive and corrective measures on cyber attacks.

Financial institutions and critical organizations can consider to have capable intrusion detection system that look beyond deterministic black-list and white-list. Also they can look into deploying honeypots that attract and trap attackers' malware and other tools.

Know Your Weakest Links (Vulnerabilities)

Organizations can hire independent security risk assessors and penetration testing teams to check for the weakest links. This can be done on a regular and assurance basis.

Know Your Crown Jewelry (Valuable Assets)

Valuable assets of organizations do not only mean physical assets, but also information asset, intellectual property and reputation. These may affect their market value and M&A deal. The customer database and in-house design works are like crown jewelry that must be heavily protected by measures like strong encryption, multiple factor authentication and granular access control.