From: American Banker
Banking regulators have been warning banks for more than a year to beef up their cyberdefenses as attacks on financial institutions become more frequent, sophisticated and widespread. New York regulators are going beyond issuing warnings, though, and will soon start grading financial firms on their cyber readiness.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday that he’s asked the Department of Financial Services to conduct cybersecurity assessments of financial institutions to ensure that they are appropriately protecting sensitive customer data. State-chartered banks, credit unions, and foreign banks whose U.S. headquarters are in New York will all be subject to the examinations.
New York officials say they are responding to the growing risk of cyberattacks facing the state’s banks. In a year-long study of state banks, the DFS found that the banks’ biggest challenge to building an adequate cyber security program is keeping up with increasingly sophisticated threats. It also found that most institutions experienced intrusions or attempted intrusions into their IT systems over the past three years and concluded that, in many cases, small institutions are less equipped than larger ones to thwart cybercrime.
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