Club Sibos Q1 2019 | Page 2

Club @ Sibos
T
he ability of organised gangs of cyber
criminals to inflict significant damage
on the global financial system was a
spectre raised at Sibos. Such gangs are not
only organised, they are also increasingly
collaborating with each other to create much
more sophisticated distributed denial of
service (DDOS) and other attacks.
While delegates at the Sibos session on a
‘cyber 9/11’ identified nation states as their
chief concern, chief executive officer of
Russian cybersecurity organisation BI.Zone,
Dmitry Samartsev, said organised gangs
posed the more immediate threat. Recent ar-
rests back this claim. In March 2018, Spanish
police arrested the suspected leader of a gang
of cyber criminals who stole up to ¤1 billion
from banks by altering account balances and
instructing automated teller machines to
issue cash. In August the same year, the US
Department of Justice (DOJ) announced the
arrest of three Ukrainian citizens suspected
of being part of a ‘prolific hacking group’.
The men were accused of using malware to
attack more than 120 US companies, along
with companies in the UK, France and Aus-
tralia. The group had skimmed more than 15
million payment card details from more than
6500 payment check-out points in the US
alone. The information was then sold via the
dark web.
In September, the US DOJ charged a North
Korean man with the 2017 WannaCry ran-
somware attack and the 2014 cyber attack on
Sony Corp. (The Sony attack was originally
attributed to ‘North Korea’ and the adminis-
tration of President Barack Obama imposed
a series of sanctions on three North Korean
organisations and ten individuals.)
Samartsev estimated cybercrime cost the
global economy around $1 trillion in 2017.
“The worst-case scenario is when cyber
criminals make several attacks at once, say,
starting with a DDOS and then following that
up with attacks on social networks,” Samart-
sev told Sibos delegates. “It would enable the
domino effect of citizens then all simulta-
neously going to their accounts to take their
money out and put it under the mattress. That
then starts trouble with liquidity and central
banks, and then you have the problem of coop-
erating across borders to fight against it.”
He said the advantage enjoyed by cyber
EDITORIAL
criminals on the dark web is their ability and
willingness to collaborate. Financial insti-
tutions need to do the same and make up
for the lost time that criminals have used to
their advantage. He expressed concern that
police and security agencies such as Interpol
were not collaborating enough to fight cyber
threats. Geopolitical tensions were exacerbat-
ing this lack of action.
At Interpol’s 87th general assembly in Dubai
in November 2018, then senior vice-president
of the organisation, Kim Jong Yang, said in the
age of “unprecedented information exchange”,
police the world over are increasingly facing
new challenges. Interpol must continue to
strengthen its “global early warning system”
by means of policing capabilities, to detect and
prevent the flows of transnational crime. “It is
a swiftly transforming environment, not least
in terms of scope and technologies. This is the
era of artificial intelligence, cyberspace un-
knowns and intensive digital activity.” Interpol
provides a neutral, well-connected platform
to gather best practices into an international
model, he said.
During the Sibos cyber 9/11 session, the
head of cybersecurity for major Australian
telco Telstra, Jacqueline McNamara, agreed
BRETT LANCASTER, SWIFT
with Samartsev’s call for greater collabora-
tion. “I think the issue we have is there is a
lot of financial incentive for cyber criminals
to collaborate and get on with it,” she said.
“But for us, when we are told that we need
to collaborate to fight against it, we can see
it as a distraction and taking us away from
our day-to-day jobs. We need to be more
preventative.”
Speaking to Club@Sibos, Brett Lancaster,
global head of customer security at Swift,
said the global and transaction nature of the
finance sector links institutions together to
a degree that isn’t matched in many other
industries. “When it comes to cyber threats,
DESIGN & PRODUCTION
Art Director
HEATHER MCKENZIE
Tel: [phone]
[e-mail] OLIVIA ROSZKOWSKA
Tel: [phone]
olivia.roszkowska@
globalcustodian.com
PAUL SKELDON
Contibutors
JON WATKINS
RICHARD SCHWARTZ
this brings a significant element of shared
risk. Sharing threat and attack information
is vital to promoting collective security. It
helps institutions to take preventative action
before an attack takes place and improves the
chances that incidents that do occur can be
contained.”
Lancaster said there had been import-
ant progress in recent years with financial
institutions sharing threat information. Swift
highlights its customers’ contractual obliga-
tion to share attack and breach information
immediately. A dedicated Customer Security
Intelligence team at Swift shares anony-
mised information on attacks. In addition,
Swift’s Information Sharing and Analysis
Centre (ISAC) is a global information sharing
platform that enables Swift members to take
mitigating action to defend against further
attacks. “Swift ISAC disseminates its infor-
mation as a browser portal and as a feed in
industry standard STIX/TAXII format,” said
Lancaster.
Like the speakers at Sibos, Lancaster rec-
ognises that cyber criminals work together
to share tools, targets and intelligence. “The
only option for us to stay ahead is to remain
vigilant and work more closely together. In
“Sharing threat and attack information is vital to promoting
collective security. It helps institutions to take preventative action
before an attack takes place.”
Editor
Multimedia Editor
CYBER SECURITY
many cases, the mechanisms for informa-
tion sharing are already there, so we need to
ensure that financial institutions understand
the value of transparency and are making full
use of the channels and intelligence available
to them.”
Another plank in Swift’s cyber security plat-
form is the Customer Security Programme
(CSP), which was designed to address cyber
security systematically across a community
with members differing in size, complexity
and location. Lancaster says the level of re-
sponse to the CSP demonstrates the financial
industry’s commitment to combatting the
persistent threat of cyber attacks. “By the
ADVERTISING ADDRESS
Advertising Director Tungsten Publishing Ltd
DALJIT SOKHI
Tel: [phone]
[e-mail]
20 Little Britain
London, UK
EC1A 7DH
Tel: [phone]
Senior Account Manager
SADIE JONES
Tel: [phone]
[e-mail]
Printed by: Innovative Print
Solutions Pte Ltd.
Club@Sibos is owned and
produced by Tungsten Publishing
Ltd.
©Tungsten Publishing 2018
No part of this publication may
be reproduced, in whole or in part,
without written permission from
the publisher.