The Evolution of Cybersecurity within the American Financial Sector
Collectively speaking, America’s financial institutions form the backbone of the global financial system—which is heavily reliant on information technology (IT) systems. These financial IT systems orchestrate virtually every aspect of financial operations
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The Evolution of Cybersecurity within the American Financial Sector
The American Financial Sector: Tempting Targets for CyberAttackers Intuitively, banks and other key financial institutions are quite often major targets of cybercriminals, via cyberattacks, across the globe. Generally speaking, financial institutions are tempting target because, quite simply, this is where the money is kept. However, the collective impact of U.S. banking institutions extends well beyond the mere management of monetary currency inventories. Networked banking systems enable billions of financial e-transactions and monetary transfers, loans, and payments every day through a vast array of financial services networks. Collectively speaking, America’s financial institutions form the backbone of the global financial system—which is heavily reliant on information technology (IT) systems. These financial IT systems orchestrate virtually every aspect of financial operations—from executing billions of dollars in daily transactions to generating financial audit reports to managing consumer services. Because of the criticality of these operations, the integrity and security of the financial data contained on these IT systems is paramount. To maintain this essential data security, highly robust and resilient IT systems and well-maintained/secured networks are required. So long as the financial sector’s institutional financial data and its supporting infrastructure remains both secure and operational from cyberattacks, this only strengthens and reenforces the global financial © The Author(s) 2020 P.-L. Pomerleau and D. L. Lowery, Countering Cyber Threats to Financial Institutions, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-54054-8_3
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system as a whole (Zheng & Carter, 2015). As the Center for Strategic and International Studies (2020) explains, for the would-be cybercriminals, banking institutions offer “multiple avenues for profit through extortion, theft, and fraud,” (p. 1) while sovereign nation-state actors and hacktivists also intentionally “target the financial sector for political and ideological leverage” (p. 1).
The American Economy: A Major Element of National Security Because American financial institutions play such an out-sized and critical role in the world’s overarching Global Financial System, the U.S. economy makes an extremely tempting target—and can therefore be vulnerable to nefarious cyber-related economic/financial-related criminal activities. However, keep in mind that threats to America’s economy are not just solely limited to would-be cybercriminals seeking financial e-commerce-related treasure. The key elements of the U.S. economy— including both the financial sector and key infrastructure components— can also be susceptible to a variety of offensive cyberspace operations by any number of America’s nation-state competitors. Non-state national security-related actors, such as terrorist organizations, could also seek to do the United States harm (Borghard, 2018). Borghard (2018) effectiv
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