Collective defense
To counter their criminality, we — the good guys, the white hats — must likewise not work in isolation from each other, but more and more in collaboration.”
The idea of collective defense is nothing new. I first learned about it way back when it was introduced by NATO. It’s a principle that was based on NATO’s long standing military alliance. As NATO famously stated: an attack against one member is considered an attack against all NATO allies. NATO invoked Article 5 shortly after the 9/11 attacks.
But what about cyber-attacks? Can Article 5 be invoked if the battle ground is in cyber space? With the current global geopolitical landscape and the threats from nation states, I think we all agree we’re in a cyber war right now. As recent as February of this year, U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, said there were no clear guidelines on how NATO should respond, should such an attack take place.
“These are things that have been in hypothetical discussions for a decade, but because we’ve not come to any universal conclusion on what those standards are, what level of attribution is needed, we’re kind of in a very grey area,” he told Reuters.
I will say this though, there has been a concerted effort, at the highest levels in government, to build relationships between the private and public sectors, especially those that are a part of our critical infrastructures. The Financial Services Sector is a vital component of our nation’s critical infrastructure.
These cyber attacks have been going on for years. Recent attacks against other critical infrastructure such as the Energy Sector (Colonial Pipeline) have garnered a lot of publicity, but the attacks have not stopped against our banking community. We certainly witnessed a spike in cyber attacks during the pandemic but make no bones about it, there has not been a slowdown.
Threat Intelligence
Marc Crudgington, CEO of CyberFore Systems and Trusted Advisor to Texas Bankers Information Security and Analysis Organization (TBISAO), writes in his book, The Coming Cyber War, how cyber threat intelligence and sharing it is crucial to our individual, commercial, military, industrial and national security.
“From information to intelligence you must realize that threat actors do not work only in isolation from each other but very often in collaboration with each other. To counter their criminality, we — the good guys, the white hats — must likewise not work in isolation from each other, but more and more in collaboration.”
It’s really that simple.
Our community banks in Texas have certainly embraced the whole collective defense approach to thwarting these cyber attacks. Our numbers continue to grow with our ISAO — we’re right at 250 members. It’s a very close knit community that want to help one another. I feel confident that we’ve got the right tools in place to help our community banks, but we’re constantly looking to improve and make sure our banks have the most relevant and timely threat intelligence that they in turn, can take action on. We’re also working with the new State Fusion Center in Texas to address the financial crimes that continue to impact our banking community. Recently, one of their analysts identified, on the dark web, multiple fraudulent checks going to fictitious companies. We put them in contact with the bank and they were able to stop the losses before they occurred.
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