As co-founder & CEO at Cymulate, Eyal Wachsmann knows a thing or two about cybersecurity. Cymulate offer a SaaS-based approach to breach and attack simulation, helping companies locate and plug holes in their infrastructure. Here, he turns his attention to the integrity of the financial system as a whole…
Are advances in fintech making our personal data safer or is risk growing with each new innovation?
Fintech is progressing rapidly as companies in the financial services sector require personal data for multiple purposes.
Consequently, the number of locations where the data is stored continues to grow, which, in turn, majorly elevates the level of exposure to a potential data breach at any of these entities.
Financial institutions, vendors, sub-contractors and third parties operating in this industry must take heed of this risk and comply with necessary security standards including employee awareness, network segmentation, encryption and data leakage.
Will the future of the sector be a face-off between AI cybercriminals and AI cybersecurity? If so, what are the implications for human agency in the field?
As technology advances, artificial intelligence will become more commonplace within our day-to-day activities and in parallel, cyber criminals will increasingly leverage it to perform more sophisticated attacks. To counter this, defensive cyber vendors are incorporating AI into their solutions which will require continual development as attacks evolve. Ultimately, the prevalence of AI will make life harder at both ends and accelerated growth in the cybersecurity workforce will be needed to enable organisations to cope with this evolving world.
artificial intelligence will become more commonplace within our day-to-day activities and in parallel, cyber criminals will increasingly leverage it to perform more sophisticated attacks.
How vulnerable to breach are legacy institutions when attempting “digital transformation”? What extra measures should they adopt to prevent attacks during periods of technological overhaul?
Digital transformation for legacy institutions is critical and their need to accomplish this usually requires quick, automated and broader services than originally planned, making those organisations that won’t evolve become obsolete. However, this transformation holds many risks and the process requires meticulous planning and execution.
New architecture needs to be carefully developed and customised, taking into consideration infrastructure requirements that will keep the environment stable and prevent down-time. Network topology and segmentation can be implemented to prevent unauthorised access to assets and exfiltration of data, plus the creation and enhancement of applications should follow approved Secure Development lifecycle methodologies. All these changes need to be tested continuously prior to moving to production to minimise vulnerabilities and risk of cyberattacks.
New architecture needs to be carefully developed and customised, taking into consideration infrastructure requirements that will keep the environment stable and prevent down-time.
What will cybersecurity look like in 10 years?
From geopolitical to economic crises, many external influences impact the evolution of technology and its associated processes, however it is clear that cybersecurity will remain a large part of our lives and continue to develop a more critical role within the enterprise.
- IoT will further propagate as connected devices become integral to our day-to-day living. The need to defend all of these touch points will require immense work, commencing with secure development, moving towards monitoring and detection solutions that incorporate protective suits of individual houses to prevent whole neighbourhoods and cities from shutting down or falling hostage to nation-state powers
- There will be an increased focus on managed security service providers as companies will shift the workload of protecting their assets to specialised and skilled third parties to optimise costs and leverage best-of-breed technology
- The internet will be more accessible in developing countries due to expansion of satellite communication and its highly likely that more opportunistic threat actors from around the world will join the threat landscape.
