Financial sector plans cybersecurity drills

The financial services sector is putting up new defenses against cyberattacks with a dress rehearsal of how to deal with a hack attack before it happens.

The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC)--a group formed in response to a 1998 Presidential security directive--announced last week that it's inviting financial institutions, retailers, card processors and businesses of all sizes to participate in its Cyber Attack Against Payment Processes (CAPP) exercise.

"FS-ISAC in conjunction with a variety of industry partners is testing their members' emergency response, notification, and communication procedures in response to a number of different types of cyber attacks against payment processes," the group's website says. "The three-day exercise will simulate a different attack scenario each day. Detailed result collection is kept confidential."

The event is scheduled Feb. 9-11. Participants will be expected to activate their incident response procedures in accordance with the scenario presented, and to complete an anonymous survey to evaluate their organization's response.

"When cyber security threats occur, swift and well-planned reactions can mean the difference between business continuity and business catastrophe," said Bill Nelson, FS-ISAC's president and CEO in a statement. "This is especially true with cyber attacks against payment processes. FS-ISAC is eager to provide payment systems participants with this unique opportunity to test their readiness to respond to major cyber attack incidents."

It's never too soon to plan an effective response to an attack, especially since the number of cyberattacks throughout the Internet keeps growing every year.

The Panda Labs recently released its 2009 annual malware report that found 25 million new malware variants created in 2009, 166 percent more than the 15 million variants recorded by the company in its 20-year history. Most of the malware was online banking Trojans.

For more on cyberattack drills:
- see this InformationWeek article

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