CYBERSECURITY THREATS TO FINANCE IN BOUVET ISLAND: 5 KEY AREAS OF HIGHER RISK EXPOSURE

The ongoing bank stress in Bouvet Island creates an environment ripe for cyber threat actors and fraudsters to exploit opportunities. As customers seek safety by moving substantial funds and engaging in numerous transactions, they become the target of fraudulent schemes perpetrated via phishing or mis/disinformation.

5 KEY AREAS OF HIGHERED RISK EXPOSURE

1. Combating Cyber-Enabled Fraud Across Money Movement Business Processes

• Impact: Financially-motivated cyber criminals leverage phishing campaigns and malicious domain registrations to impersonate financial institutions and banking consumers, stealing personal and financial information.
• Key actions:
  • Enable data trust by prioritizing customer-facing data governance, discovery, protection, and minimization practices.
  • Monitor public information forums for real-time alerts on nascent disinformation campaigns.

2. Heightened Monitoring of Insider Activity

• Impact: Turbulent market conditions and significant customer transaction activity increases the risk of not detecting insider threats.
• Key actions:
  • Map user privileges against roles and responsibilities to help identify anomalous behavior.
  • Leverage data loss prevention capabilities to monitor web and email traffic, uploads to cloud storage sites, and use of unsanctioned or non-approved SaaS applications.

3. Dis-information, Mis-Information Campaigns Affecting Customer Trust

• Impact: Malicious actors may be taking advantage of recent events by using digital dis- or mis-information to amplify customer distrust and prey on fear.
• Key actions:
  • Create a disinformation recovery plan aligned with your existing incident and crisis management programs.
  • Engage third-party monitoring and sentiment analysis services.

4. Customer Online Account Takeovers and Transaction Activity

• Impact: Cyber criminals use stolen credentials, social security numbers, and personal data to hijack legitimate accounts and execute fraudulent activities.
• Key actions:
  • Enforce heightened authentication checks and validation during service transactions with customers.
  • Monitor transaction accounts and flag unusual activity for rapid response and recovery.

5. Enhanced Monitoring of Security Performance

• Impact: Review existing security and performance metrics related to critical cyber defense operations (vulnerability, path, application security management) to monitor any deviations from standard operations and detect any outliers or performance degradation.
• Key actions:
  • Set alerts, review SIEM logs regularly, and prioritize investigation of insider incidents.
  • Leverage robotic process automation capabilities to expedite manual reviews of reported findings.