![]() A recent look at over 100,000 ransomware attacks in the second quarter of 2020 revealed that over 11% involved data theft. The ransom demands are growing ever larger, and in some cases the criminals are threatening to release private, personally identifiable information (PII) if the ransom isn’t paid. Ransomware as a service is enabling more criminals to get into the ransomware business. Ransomware is still a problem and getting more serious. ![]() What hasn’t changed? Business email compromise, or BEC, is still a huge problem. This is really stretching law enforcement resources, and that concerns me. The Covid-19 era certainly has brought with it a tidal wave of fraud, in many forms. Cybersecurity compliance is now part of every institution’s compliance portfolio.Īs for whether the threat landscape is changing, in some ways no, and in other ways, yes. Even if funds were stolen as a result of the customer’s naivete or negligence, the customer may still try to hold the bank accountable.Īnd finally, they need to be mindful of regulators, who are now holding financial institutions to a higher standard when it comes to cybersecurity. Second, they need to protect their customers from fraud. There is also the problem of insider threats – criminally minded employees, who try to gain access to funds. phishing email) that entices an employee to click on a link and download malware. This kind of attack could come from outside in the form of social engineering (e.g. What are the biggest threats currently faced by financial institutions from cyber-enabled financial crime, and how has the threat landscape changed over time?įinancial institutions have three principal concerns.įirst, they need to protect their institution from theft. Some state-sponsored cybercrime is financially motivated (for example, North Korea), whereas other types of state-sponsored cybercrime might be motivated by espionage (such as China and Russia). Finally, we cannot make generalizations about state-sponsored cybercrime vs cybercrime carried out by criminals. And yet, that stolen IP has potential financial value for the thieves and represents a real financial loss to the company. The goal is to steal IP, not drain bank accounts or cryptocurrency wallets. There are some types of cybercrime, such as the theft of intellectual property that are trickier to categorize. Cyber-enabled financial crime is a smaller subset of cybercrime and includes crimes with a financial end-goal: ransomware, sextortion schemes, identity theft, money laundering, etc. But not all of these crimes have a financial motivation. ![]() – Peter Hardy How would you define cyber-enabled financial crime and how does that differ from the general category of cybercrime?Ĭybercrime encompasses any crime committed online, including ransomware attacks, cyber-espionage, child pornography and cyber vandalism. We hope you enjoy this discussion, which addresses how cyber-enabled financial crime threatens financial institutions and their customers. This blog post takes the form of a Q & A session, in which Professor Ruehsen responds to several questions posed by Money Laundering Watch about the critical topic of cyber-enabled financial crime. She served for several years on the Editorial Advisory Board of Money Laundering Alert, and the Middle East Task Force of the Association of Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialists, or ACAMS.įor an extremely entertaining and illuminating discussion by Professor Ruehsen of how popular TV and movies get money laundering right (and wrong), see here. government, multilateral organizations and the private sector. Professor Ruehsen also consults for the U.S. She has published articles and book chapters on a variety of topics related to threat finance and is a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist and a Certified Financial Crime Specialist. For more than 20 years, Professor Ruehsen has taught financial crime-related courses on a variety of topics including money laundering, trade-based financial crime, corruption, proliferation financing, terrorist financing and cyber-enabled financial crime. Today we are very pleased to welcome guest blogger Moyara Ruehsen, PhD, CAMS, CFCS, who is an Associate Professor and Director of the Financial Crime Management Program at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies in Monterey, California.
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