Cyber war on the commercial side

Houston Chronicle:
At all times, San Antonio-based USAA is at war.
For the financial services company, security is a priority, with about 350 employees dedicated to keeping the 286-acre campus and its customers' information safe from the thousands of online attacks it receives daily.
To ensure that safety, the company, which specializes in serving military families, developed technologies that alert it when bad guys are at the door.
USAA has a war room that tracks where threats originate and monitors social networking posts and chat rooms for would-be enemies.
The company also has rolled out security measures its members can use for online banking.
"We want to be proactive, to be ahead of the game," said Jack Key, vice president of USAA's information security unit.
Financial institutions need to safeguard their systems more than ever with the increasing amount of information being shared digitally.
USAA "has taken steps internally and externally to harden their infrastructure to protect their members," said Martha Vazquez, an industry analyst for consultant Frost & Sullivan. "They lead in innovation."
Behind locked doors in a room with restricted access is the company's Cyber Threat Operations Center. It looks like most IT offices, with rows of cubicles equipped with multiscreen computers and white boards.
Along a 30-foot wall is a spinning digital globe with pulsating color-coded dots that the center's 25 employees monitor around the clock. The dots glow red, yellow or green to alert the staff to the severity of attacks and where they are coming from.
To the right of the globe, a steady stream of social networking posts are displayed. The staff looks for keywords pertaining to USAA and its systems.
The center has been in use for about 18 months and is updated continuously to deal with the malicious activity. It blocks about 35,000 attacks daily.
"The landscape is worsening and will continue to get worse due to the increase of mobile devices and how we share information today," Vazquez said.
... 
Cyber thieves need to be found and prosecuted, not just detected and deterred.  That is the only way to slow these attempted thefts.  USAA does a good job of identifying the source of the attacks.   Unlike the military they cannot launch a real counter attack that will fry the system of the intruder.  That is unfortunate, because that would be a serious deterrent.

Comments

  1. Tregonsee8:39 AM

    I have just finished my 40th year as a USAA customer. Back in the day, you had to be a serving officer to join, though of necessity they have widened the criteria considerably. Good to see they are keeping on top of this threat. One wonders if their security people, just once, have been tempted to "reach out and touch somebody" to make a point?

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