BY: 3 Jun 2016 at 13:57, John Leyden
The SWIFT global payments system has announced it plans to suspend banks with weaker cyber defences until they improve their security.
The threatened sanction follows a run of attacks on international banks over recent weeks, including the $81m mega-heist at the Bangladeshi Central Bank.
These cyber-heists1 relied on hackers using malware infecting bank terminals to obtain login credentials for the SWIFT messaging system, allowing crooks to send fraudulent transfer orders.
In response, SWIFT said it will "expand" its use of two-factor authentication as well as mandating “baseline” security standards, which financial institutions will be assisted in meeting.
SWIFT’s customer security programme will clearly define an operational and security baseline that customers must meet to protect the processing and handling of their SWIFT transactions. SWIFT will also continue to enhance its own products and services to provide customers with additional protection and detection mechanisms, and in turn help customers to meet these baselines.
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