If credit unions use Internet of Things technology to better understand and serve their accountholders they must also understand the associated cybersecurity risks and new vulnerabilities – and protect member information.
These devices, linked through an internet scheme of systems, includes smart phones, smart speakers, wearables, automobiles, refrigerators, copy machines, energy management services, employee IDs and meeting management tools.
Gartner places the total global connected instruments at 8.4 billion, and anticipates more than 20 billion IoT devices by 2020.
"Enterprises continue to interconnect endpoints, objects, and platforms to their networks, disintegrating traditional network perimeters, converging the digital and the physical worlds, and creating new security challenges," Rocco Grillo, executive managing director of cyberresilience firm Stroz Friedberg, said. "Beyond devices, companies are linking more business processes to the internet to gather data, drive efficiencies, and automate, monitor, and control operations."
Credit unions' use of smart devices provides a better view of member finances in real time, and allows them to better anticipate accountholder needs through the data collected. However, they must also look closer at data management, security, and privacy practices.
"IoT devices rely on intimate customer data. All that information is trafficked across a network of billions of connected devices, each of which represents a potential security risk," Monica Eaton-Cardone, COO of Chargebacks911 and CIO of its parent company Clearwater, Fla.-based Global Risk Technologies.
"The biggest mistake credit unions make is not tracking or managing IoT devices. We keep track of computers, but forget about all those pesky devices and vendor equipment that gets connected to our network," Sherri Davidoff, founder/CEO of Missoula, Mont.-based LMG Security, pointed out,
"Internet of things devices bring virtual ears and eyes into financial business settings, and areas where credit union employees and their customers, vendors, and guests work, talk, and interact," Rebecca Herold, president of the Des Moines, Iowa-based SIMBUS and CEO of The Privacy Professor, said.
The threats are real. Malware-using botnets harnessed from IoT devices helped launch a massive DDoS attack that disrupted U.S. internet traffic in 2016. In 2017, the same Reaper IoT botnet infected nearly two million devices and grew at an extraordinary rate of 10,000 new devices per day.
For more about cybersecurity and IoT read the full article in the Feb. 7 issue of CU Times.
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Roy Urrico
Roy W. Urrico specializes in articles about financial technology and services for Credit Union Times, as well as ghostwriting, copywriting, and case studies. Also: writer/editor of a semi-annual newsletter for Association for Financial Technology since 1997 and history projects funded by the U.S Interior Department, National Park Service and Warren County (N.Y.).
