Critical Security Intelligence for the Financial Services Sector

A Financial Services Use Case

Since its conception Signal is proud to have developed a strong use case across the financial sector. Proving to be an invaluable tool for a number of financial services organisations including several multinational and Fortune 1000 companies. 

Signal open source threat intelligence platform now forms an integral part of their security teams’ toolbox, assisting across concerns, from detecting and managing physical threats to assets, reputation or VIPs, to aiding cybersecurity teams with efficient methods for open and dark web monitoring.

Physical Security

Using Signal, insurance providers, financial companies, and banking organisations can not only gain an overview of emerging threats in real-time but also target key areas and assets that they want to closely monitor creating a hyper-relevant stream of actionable real-time data.

For example, banking organisations use Signal to monitor geo-located information online, focusing their web monitoring on key locations of particular interest such as ATMs, head offices, or VIP locations. They can additionally run the focused data that surfaces through our sentiment analysis software. This allows them to help cut through the noise and quickly identify online chatter expressing negative sentiment so that they can more efficiently distinguish threats. 

A secondary use of Signal for the financial services sector is monitoring their competitors’ security threats which may also be affecting them - even if they don’t know it yet. This allows their security teams to predict potential threats even before they emerge.

How Signal has been used in the Banking Sector to Detect and Deter Threats

In 2019, one of Signals clients was able to prevent a particularly worrying case of attempted fraud. An employee at that bank was being harassed online in an attempt to instigate said employee to provide confidential information of customers to hackers for use in fraudulent activity.

Thankfully, Signal was able to spot this before matters progressed, preventing potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of damages.

Signal has also been used to pinpoint worrying sentiment against some of our customer’s executive teams.

Cyber Security Threats

Signal is also used by customers for cybersecurity intelligence to determine risks such as:

• Fraudulent statement packs; 

• Fake bank statements;

• Phishing websites (using our in-built image recognition);

• Credit card and account credentials for sale on the dark web.

Security teams use Signal to monitor both open and dark web conversations. This enables them to keep abreast of new and developing global trends and methods used in cyber fraud which is effecting their industry as a whole. Using this data they can actively develop strategies to prevent and tackle new and rising methods of cybercrime. 

Signal also allows these teams to monitor for data breaches by alerting security teams as soon as chat is identified around potential data breaches which could affect the organisation itself, or their customers.

Ways Signal Helps Financial Services

Identify negative sentiment and potential threats to customer assets.

Detect and intercept stolen credit card and account credentials for sale on the dark web.

Monitor targeted locations to create a focused stream of actionable real time data.

Signal allows our customers to analyse emerging global trends, detect threats in real-time and then form appropriate security strategies to counter these potential threats as or even before they fully reveal themselves.

For the financial services having this targeted and focused stream of accurate and relevant data is vital to ensuring the safety and security of their customers, assets, and employees.

How Watching The Dark Web Could Have Stopped A $140,000 Theft

Dayne Lynn, a young Lloyds Bank employee from Scotland, was convicted at the start of 2019 for stealing $AUD140,000 from his customers’ accounts after he was blackmailed by criminals he met on the dark web.

The crimes began when Mr Lynn joined an internet chat forum and made the mistake of revealing he worked at Lloyds Bank in Glasgow. Mr Lynn was working as a member of a team that investigates fraudulent payments and transfers, where he had access to the accounts of many bank customers.

It wasn’t long before a group of criminals on the dark web forum ordered him to steal from accounts and transfer the money to them.

On July 18, 2016, between 7:45 a.m. and 9:30 a.m. Lynn accessed almost 20 customer accounts and took tens of thousands of pounds, overcoming bank transfer restrictions using his Lloyds Bank employee credentials to access the accounts. The bank reversed all of the stolen money, however, the identity of the culprit couldn’t be established for over a year and Mr Lynn and his dark web associates almost got away with the crime.

The theft could have been averted if the bank had used Signal. Signal constantly monitors dark web traffic and simple search terms such as Lloyds Bank, banker or bank accounts might have allowed the bank to stop its staffer before he went down the road of fraud.

Data Breaches Can Be Stopped Before They Happen

The Ponemon Institute’s 2018 IBM Cost of a Data Breach study reported the average time it takes to identify a data breach is a shocking 196 days.

The time it takes Signal security intelligence to identify a potential breach being arranged on the dark web: minutes.

Australian and New Zealand banks, institutions, businesses, hospitals and ASX/NZX-listed companies can all receive early indicators so you can be proactive about security and not caught off guard.

As the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner recently found

• 78 per cent of data breaches involve individuals’ contact information

• a third of the data breaches are financial details and a third health information.

 If You Know Potential Threats, You Can Set Your Own Search Terms

Signal is an extremely user-friendly app and can be used by any staff members with minimal training. Simply put in the search terms you feel your institution needs to monitor; Signal’s easy interface then provides alerts when what you’re looking out for appears online.

• On a daily basis, Signal spots and reports Dark Web users offering to sell documentation and templates from banks and government as well as credit card numbers and logins

• Signal parses through millions of postings and conversations to recognise questionable behaviour.

• Signal is designed to recognise conversations regarding your business (bank, hospital, university) and determine the tone and context of potentially harmful language

• You as the client set up your own monitoring parameters. For example, our Hollywood filmmaking clients ask us to identify those who want to hack, leak and illegally distribute intellectual property and scripts

• Signal does all the heavy lifting, trawling the internet and sending you proactive alerts so that you hear about risks first – not 196 days later.

Data breach study author Larry Ponemon estimated a business is more likely to experience a data breach of 10,000 records than a person is to catch the flu over winter.

The average cost of EACH data breach in 2020 is anticipated to exceed $150 million, with worldwide costs estimated at $2 trillion

Don’t let a failure to watch the web cost your company.

Signal offers free demonstrations of outstandingly effective software. We have dozens of examples of top sharelisted companies relying on Signal software to avert risk. www.GetSignal.info or email info@signalpublicsafety.com