QUESTION
Mutual Funds
For your second assignment you are required to summarize another recent article. Your second article shouldbe different than your first article andrelate to the material covered in chapters 10 through 18 of your textbook. At the end of each chapter there is a list of key terms for the specific chapter. At least one of these key terms should be discussed in your article. We have created a key term sign-up sheet which contains a long list of key terms from which you can select. You can find the listing in the Modules area.Here is what you need to do for this activity:* (Article Attached) * Summarize the article and list its association to specific chapter material or concepts in your textbook. State the reason(s) for your selection.* Provide a definition for the specific concept discussed in your selected article. For example, if the article discusses securitization you should include its definition: securitization is setting aside a group of income earning assets and issuing securities against them in order to raise new funds.* List some important points or lessons learned from this article.* Provide a full copy of the article (links are not acceptable).
Article Title and Date of the Article
Why the ABA Got Hacked — and What It Means for Banks
American Banker October 2, 2015
Summary: The ABA (American Bankers Association) announced that its website had been hacked, resulting in access to 6,400 users' email addresses and passwords. This is the first breach ever for the ABA. Although it has been targeted in the past, this time hackers got away with user passwords and IDs. The hackers targeted the shopping cart with a likely motive of also accessing user credit card information. The hackers were able to get away with email addresses and passwords to try and use them in other websites like Amazon or airline sites. The ABA strongly recommends that if users use the same passwords for other sites to change their passwords immediately. The true motives behind the ABA breach may never be known. "We only hear about the really high-profile cases," Hayes said. "Everybody is being breached and this is happening on a daily basis."
Association to specific chapter material and concepts
4.10 Banking in Homes, Offices, Stores, and on the Street
Chapter 4 covers the establishment of new banks, branches, ATMs, telephone services and websites. Included in this chapter is a section on Internet Banking, the challenges in providing Internet services and customer privacy and security considerations.
Concepts
Internet Banking – the offering of information and selected services through the World Wide Web by banks and other financial service firms.
American Bankers Association – a trade group that represents financial institutions of different charters and asset sizes from around the country.
Spearphishing – an act by a criminal who tries to send a virus or malware from a seemingly trustworthy address.
Reasons for choosing this article: This article is very relevant to a certain key topic from chapter four: Establishing New Banks, Branches, ATMs, Telephone Services, and Websites. The topic is the Internet and online banking. The shift of technology has provided us to make banking easier for us by using websites to use financial services faster, and in an efficient way. This Internet service does provide great challenges like customer safety and security. Hackers use the Internet to obtain valuable information, which can cause fraud and identity theft to individuals using these services. Clearly, customer privacy and account security are major issues that will shape the future expansion of Internet-provided financial services.
Important points or lessons learned from this article
An important point that the article makes is that data breaches have increased dramatically in recent times and that anybody can be a victim of hacking. Therefore, we all need to be more vigilant and take steps to improve our security systems.
The most important lesson to take away from this article is the advice that ABA gave its customers that if they used "the same password to access other sites," such as Amazon or airline sites, "we strongly recommend you change those passwords as well." We can clearly see from this article that we need to have separate passwords for every site that we use and change them frequently. In addition we need to check our security systems on a regular basis.
Full Copy of Article
Why the ABA Got Hacked — and What It Means for Banks
By Joe Adler and Ian McKendry October 2, 2015
WASHINGTON — The number of recent data breaches is dizzying.
In recent days, Experian announced 15 million T-Mobile customers' data had been breached, the government raised its estimate of employees' fingerprints that had been compromised nearly fivefold to 5.6 million and Patreon said 2.3 million users' data had been dumped online.
By comparison, the American Bankers Association's announcement that its website had been hacked, resulting in access to 6,400 users' email addresses and passwords, might seem like small potatoes. Yet the attack against the industry trade group was still significant.
The ABA breach — the first ever at the association — may simply be due to greed, with hackers potentially trying to mine users' billing information. But observers said the targeting of ABA members also highlights a potential avenue for criminals to expose banks themselves, or may be a sign the trade group is susceptible to reputational issues still burdening banks seven years after the crisis.
Some experts said the hacking of a trade association website, where users enter personal details to sign up for events or order publications, should raise alarm bells about perpetrators potentially wanting access to credentials an employee might use at a member institution.
"It helps whoever has that data potentially to learn more about the bank that that individual is tied to," said Mercedes Tunstall, a partner at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP.
Dmitri Alperovitch, co-founder and chief technology officer at CrowdStrike Inc., said cybercriminals will target a trade group or nonprofit not necessarily to access data about that organization.
"In many of these situations the organizations themselves don't have any proprietary data that criminals or in some cases nation-states would be interested in, but what they do have is information on contacts in that sector," Alperovitch said.
But others said it is possible the ABA could be targeted for the same reasons banks have been in hackers' crosshairs.
"It could be something vindictive from an activist group, and there are activist groups for just about every industry," said Darren Hayes, assistant professor and director of cybersecurity at Pace University's Seidenberg School of Computer Science and Information Systems in New York. "It could be anything from Anonymous, who doesn't like big business and doesn't like the banking industry, all the way up to Iran."
The ABA, which learned of the breach Wednesday, announced it in a letter emailed late Thursday to any customer who had a "shopping cart" on the ABA's site. User login information was posted online, though the group said it has not seen evidence of fraud or that the hacker accessed payment information. The group was informed about the breach by the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center.
Doug Johnson, senior vice president and the ABA's chief adviser on payments and cybersecurity policy, said that, while there have been past hacking attempts to target the group, "this is to my knowledge the first time that we have seen information in terms of passwords and IDs essentially be compromised."
Johnson said the trade group is "less inclined to worry about the motivation and more inclined to worry about the incident response." After learning of the breach, he said, the group tried to gather more details before announcing it to members.
"We knew we would not know everything when the announcement went out, but we needed to know enough and we felt a real obligation to get the email announcement out as soon as we possibly could to everybody who was essentially in the shopping cart," Johnson said.
Johnson and others noted the potential for hackers accessing email address information to try to use it for "spearphishing," which is when a criminal tries to send a virus or malware
from a seemingly trustworthy address. Johnson said one reason the ABA alerted members was "to ensure that individuals were aware of the fact that they could be spearphished."
But observers said the targeting of the ABA shopping cart might suggest hackers were also potentially interested in users' credit card information, or to see if login information could be used on other online sites.
"The majority of hackers couldn't care less about the reputational aspect. They're going after money," said Ron Shevlin, director of research for Cornerstone Advisors.
The ABA told customers that if they used "the same password to access other sites," such as Amazon or airline sites, "we strongly recommend you change those passwords as well."
"When criminal cyber actors are targeting and looking to monetize the information that they are stealing, oftentimes they just scan for certain types of vulnerabilities and it doesn't matter what organization they wind up hacking; it is just the organization that ends up having that vulnerability," said Austin P. Berglas, senior managing director at K2 Intelligence and a former assistant special agent in charge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation's cyber branch in New York.
As with other breaches where hard information about the perpetrator is lacking, other theories abound.
Tunstall noted that some hacking groups are motivated by a desire to highlight security gaps in the government and financial sectors.
"Potentially, this kind of hack could show that, even if the banks have done a better job of circling around, there are also all sorts of other groups that have pretty good information that is tied to those banks and those groups need to take it seriously too. That's possible," she said.
The true motives behind the ABA breach may never be known.
"We only hear about the really high-profile cases," Hayes said. "Everybody is being breached and this is happening on a daily basis."
[/et_pb_text][et_pb_text _builder_version="4.9.3" _module_preset="default" width_tablet="" width_phone="100%" width_last_edited="on|phone" max_width="100%"]
| Subject | Business | Pages | 3 | Style | APA |
|---|
Answer
Mutual Funds
Internet banking is popular with many account holders, due to the high level of efficiency that it has brought. With internet banking, both the banks, as well as people transacting have all the reasons as to celebrate. Banking halls have lesser queues, as many clients are able to serve themselves while seated at home. Besides, with internet, clients are able to retrieve their bank history, saving the bank from the hustle of rigorous printing, as well as expenses both on printing papers as well as. The bank also saves a lot of money that would have otherwise been used in financing electricity to serve these people. Internet banking has also widened the scope of operations. This is due to the fact that, one is able to send money across the borders of a nation.
Internet banking can be defined as means through which financial services are offered to certain targeted individuals, who are served through the worldwide website. Through the worldwide website, the account holders are connected to various computer systems, which enables them to access their desired financial services with ease, whenever they need it. Developed nations, and developing one’s a like all have embraced internet banking due to numerous advantages associated with it. However, in the recent past, concerns have been raised on the insecurity of data within the internet banking. Though the data in the internet banking is backed up and locked through a sophisticated process, some intruders still find their ways into the system without proper authority. Just in the recent days, an announcement was made by the Experian that 15 million T-Mobile data, which is part of the internet banking experienced a breach in data access. This led to missions of some stored information being compromised and the data stored online accessed without due process.
America being the most developed nations, and the most advanced in terms of technology, it has the highest number of hackers. In the recent past, the country announced that a total of 6,400 unauthorized access was experienced. This raises a great concern on the safety of internet banking in America and its environs. According to American Bankers Association, the hackers are taking advantage of the bulk data to introduce strange information into the system, which are later on used to realize unauthorized access into the system. This exposure gives a reputational risk to Banking Business in America. One of the ways through integrity of the system is maintained is through using of corporate log in details and not personal details. However, there is a rise in the number of employees who insert their personal details into the system, which a loophole for authorized access.
Technology experts argue that cybercrime is often coordinated by people who have either direct or indirect interest in the banking sector. The cybercrime business is an international connection, and not limited to America only. The hackers usually compromise the log in details before gaining access to the payment details of clients. Prior to going public, the American Bankers Association had to gather facts about the cybercrime. Other than stealing data, the hackers also try to cause malware by sending virus to the system. These hackers are not interested in reputation whatsoever, as their main aim is money. The level of cybercrime is a communication tat more security is needed for bank information, as the true motives of the hackers is always not known.
References
|
American Banker Association (2015). Why the ABA got Hacked, and What it Means for Banks
|