Work From Home Fueling Cyberattacks, Says Global Financial Watchdog

An anonymous reader quotes a report from NBC News: Financial firms may need to bolster their defenses in the face of rocketing cyberattacks after employees began working from home, the Financial Stability Board (FSB) said on Tuesday. The board, which coordinates financial rules for the G20 group of nations, said remote working since economies went into lockdown to fight Covid-19 opened up new possibilities for cyberattacks. Working from home is expected to stay in some form across the financial services industry and beyond. 'Most cyber frameworks did not envisage a scenario of near-universal remote working and the exploitation of such a situation by cyber threat actors,' the FSB said in a report to G20 ministers and central banks.

Cyber activities such as phishing, malware and ransomware grew from fewer than 5,000 per week in February 2020 to more than 200,000 per week in late April, the FSB said. 'Financial institutions have generally been resilient but they may need to consider adjustments to cyber risk management processes, cyber incident reporting, response and recovery activities, as well as management of critical third-party service providers, for example cloud services,' the FSB said. The FSB, chaired by Federal Reserve Vice Chair Randal Quarles and comprising regulators and central banks from leading financial centers, will publish a final report in October setting out its next steps. It has already made proposals for strengthening the resilience of money market funds which suffered severed stresses during last year's market turmoil.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.