Cloud and crypto are points of weakness in cyber security

We are in an era of technological reliance, often dealing with new and unfamiliar innovations that leave us vulnerable. The cyber criminals have caught on to that – ransomware attacks are now a lucrative business and data is their favourite hostage. At PostTrade 360° Helsinki 2023, Phil Hayes, EMEA Lead of Citi’s Cyber Security Fusion division, dived into some of the biggest cyber threats today and the strategies to overcome them.

This session was sponsored by Citi.

According to figures from IBM, 45 percent of organisations worldwide are likely to experience a cyber attack on their supply chain by 2025. Ransomware-as-a-service is now lucrative business, with cyber criminals developing ransomware code and selling it to other threat actors. Cloud technology, the Internet of things (IoT), and cryptocurrencies are the three biggest weak points in our technological landscape – the last, because it’s not well regulated and difficult to trace.

Knowledge is power. Among the many areas that run under Citi’s Cyber Security Fusion, Phil Hayes named cyber intelligence as one of the most important. “It informs how we react, and it informs us of the threats that are out there,” he explained. He is a proponent of regular security exercises, whether it is with Citi’s in-house teams or vendors. Employees are regularly tested with phishing emails to keep them alert – “the biggest attack surface for us is our email system and the biggest weakness is our people”. With vendors, testing scenarios before they happen could go a long way in staying resilient during an actual attack event.