September 2, 2008 - Linda McGlasson

Everyone was watching the Olympics this past month and saw lots of records being broken. But there is one record no one want to be included in -- the record number of 449 data breaches that have happened (and been made public) and recorded by the Identity Theft Resource Center.

Unfortunately for some unlucky players (and their customers) in the financial services industry, they're on this year's list....

August 29, 2008 - Mike D'Agostino

GLBA who? Bank Secrecy what? Insider Threat?...is that something mob-related?

Your customers may not even know your institution is examined for security compliance by the banking regulatory agencies, and so most likely will have never even heard about the ID Theft Red Flags Rule and the impending November 1 compliance date. That being said, the resulting preparedness by financial institutions to adhere to the Red Flags Rule and strengthen their position against identity thieves will hopefully have a resounding effect on said customers.

I'm convinced that if you asked the majority of people how their bank operates -- more specifically, how their bank operates in a "secure" manner -- they would be clueless. I have no caveats saying the general public has no concept of how their private information is kept private, and the steps financial institutions go through to secure their sensitive data. Some would tell me that the general public doesn't have to know, they shouldn't care how it is done, just that it ("security") is getting done and everything is being done to keep their sensitive data private. I think I would agree, however there is one ultimate security concern that consumers have. I'll explain below......

August 26, 2008 - David Schneier

So, I'd started my weekly blog entry intending to discuss application security (I'm keenly interested in what the just-released BIS survey is going to reveal) when the following headline came across on my BIS RSS feed "Social Engineering Hits Brit Bank Head, Victim of Fraud."

You'll have to forgive me for being so easily distracted by this headline, but social engineering is a topic of immense interest for me these days....