The event briefed C-Suite and senior executives on what they need to know about cyber risks
On 24 May, Karel de Kneef, Head of Security Operations at Swift, spoke at the WSJ Cyber Security Executive Forum, a one-day event held in London which brought together experts from industry and government to arm senior executives with the information they need to prepare for and respond to the growing risks of cybercrime.
De Kneef was ‘in conversation’ with Phillipa Leighton-Jones, WSJ City Editor, on how best to respond to a hack. He first stressed the importance of organisations preparing their recovery plans well in advance of being compromised – being well prepared is an essential step towards minimising the operational, financial and reputational impact of an attack.He went on to explain that if a company has been breached, it is essential to make a forensic copy of the compromised system before the clean-up starts, to ensure that loss of data is minimised.De Kneef also strongly recommended the engagement of a specialist forensics companies to help, as more harm than good can be done by organisations attempting this if they do not have these specialist skills in-house. He also described how Swift can help its customers conduct a reconciliation exercise when attackers delete evidence of fraudulent transactions on their local system.De Kneef said that information sharing is hugely important in the fight against cybercrime, and he explained how Swift has set up an information sharing portal, called the Swift ISAC, to help its customers. There is a wealth information contained in the Swift ISAC, such as details on indicators of compromise (IOC), information about malware samples observed, and descriptions of the modus operandi used by attackers. Swift has created a CSI team that works together with experts from specialist cyber companies and banks to ensure every case of compromise results in updates to our Swift ISAC thereby assisting others in the financial community by alerting customers to the the latest developments in cyber fraud techniques.For more information on how Swift can help in the fight against cybercrime, consult our Customer Security Programme pages on swift.com.