Financial institutions will face an assortment of risks that will have to be managed. This is especially true with modern banking as the use of networking and other computer components can substantially increase the range of attacks that the institution could face.

Identifying Potential Sources Of Risk

It is difficult to effectively mitigate a threat or risk if you are not aware of it being a concern. Completing a comprehensive risk assessment for the institution can be a critical step in securing it. These assessments can help you with identifying the systems that are the most likely to be targeted by criminals. In addition to assessing the most likely targets during an attack, it is also useful to assess the systems and components that may provide backdoor access to critical systems. Once you are armed with this information, you can take steps to harden these access points and limit the ability of an intruder to reach the sensitive data that your institution may be storing.

Monitoring To Assess Intrusions Into Secure Systems

Regardless of the steps that you are taking to secure your systems, there is always a chance that an intruder will find a way to breach your defenses. Being alerted to this situation as quickly as possible can allow you to take steps to limit the damage and to close their connection. Having monitoring programs that can scan your network for unusual or unexpected connections and activity will be an important way of reducing the likelihood of these attacks being able to cause widespread damage to your systems. When configuring these systems, it is best to have any alerts that are created to go to multiple senior staff so that the risk of the alert going to someone that is on vacation or otherwise unavailable will be limited.

Conducting Frequent Vendor Risk Assessments

There are likely a number of vendors that you will work with to keep the business running. Unfortunately, vendors can often be an attack vector that is not appreciated. This is especially true for institutions that rely on third party vendor software solutions. There may be security issues or other problems that could create unexpected vulnerabilities. Identifying and addressing these vulnerabilities can be a serious challenge due to the complexity involved. However, there are third party vendor risk management services that will help with this need. By working with these professionals to periodically assess your vendors and the products they supply, you can mitigate this potential source of risk.