September 29, 2014, New York, NY — Verittas Risk Advisors, Inc. (Verittas) announced that George Mark, CEO, participated in a panel presentation titled “Cybersecurity: Tales from the Trenches” at the Financial Managers Society 2014 East Coast Regional Conference in Hershey, PA on September 28, 2014. The panel was a joint presentation of Verittas, Tangible Security, and Teraverde Management Advisors. The conference is held annually for financial executives representing companies throughout the East Coast.
The panel discussed a variety of cybersecurity threats that banks face; how recent hacking incidents were accomplished; and key risk reduction techniques, including how companies can improve security by “ethical hacking,” in which “gray hat hackers” use the same techniques as the most sophisticated real hackers.
A regulatory report earlier this year on cyber security in the banking sector found that most institutions surveyed have come under cyber-attack at some point in the past three years. The attacks were irrespective of the institutions’ sizes, highlighting how prevalent an issue hacking has become.
“Many leading banking executives worry that we’re going to have some major cyber event in the financial system that’s going to cause us all to shudder,” commented Mark.
Mark also noted that while there’s a role for policy makers and legislators to address the issue, the public sector may also be able to prod the private sector to take steps to better handle the risk.
“We need to think about ways to incentivize the market participants to do more to protect themselves from attacks,” Mark said.
Mark noted the rising market for cyber-attack insurance, still in its relative infancy. That, in turn, could help companies improve their internal systems to fight such breaches, as those efforts could help them secure policies.
The panel also discussed the frequent compromises of routine operational procedures by employees and vendors that are the source of most security breaches, and the importance of ongoing security assessments because new vulnerabilities are continually being introduced into technology systems, business processes and through employee behaviors.
Verittas Risk Advisors is a national firm providing regulatory consulting, internal audit and risk advisory services to the financial and banking industries. Verittas has offices in New York City, Coral Gables, Dallas and Lancaster, PA. For more information visit www.verittas.com
Media Contact:
Don Bishop
Affinigent, Inc.
(717) 230-1937
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