Cyber Security Solutions for Businesses in Financial Services

Shahzeb Akhtar,Ajith Kumar V V Ajith Kumar V V,Pratima Amol Sheorey,Sonali Bhattacharya

doi:10.4018/ijbir.20210101.oa5

Abstract

This paper examines the challenges that small, medium, and large businesses in the financial services industry are facing concerning data security and providing relevant tools and strategies to protect the same. A qualitative research-based approach has been used where one-on-one interviews were conducted with 10 CIOs (chief information officers) and CISOs (chief information security officers). This data was compared with secondary data sources to validate the findings. This paper presents an in-depth analysis regarding security technologies and their efficacy to protect data assets and sensitive information. It will also opine about the technologies that each business type can use economically to cover the gamut of cyber-attacks. Existing research is restricted to either addressing small and medium businesses (SMBs) or large businesses. This paper attempts a comprehensive review for all sizes of businesses.

Highlights

Cyber threats are the reality for any business in this digital age
Based on the data that has been collected and analyzed throughout, the researcher has generated some themes which cuts across all the responses that we have received while interviewing the respondents
The 9 open-ended questions were converted into major research questions that guided us throughout the interview process

Summary

Introduction

The purpose of this research paper is to understand the major cyber threats concerning small, medium and large organizations and the ways to mitigate them. In February 2016, a noted bank hack was executed, where $81 million were transferred from Bank of Bangladesh to accounts in the Philippines and Sri Lanka via Federal Reserve Bank through some payment messaging system (New York Times Magazine, 2018). In another cybersecurity breach in 2017, multiple computers were frozen worldwide by a ransomware attack, which exploited a vulnerability in a Microsoft portal to spread this self-propagating ransomware through public internet channels (NPR, 2017)

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Conclusion