how financial institutions can prepare to react quickly through regulatory compliance

All over the world, the number of attacks by cybercriminals targeting the financial sector is increasing, and the UK & Ireland is no exception
to this trend. According to Veritas research half of UK organisations said that, over the past two years, they had been the victim
of at least one successful ransomware attack in which hackers were able to infiltrate their systems.   

The increasing profitability of these attacks for the criminals, means a whole new industry – Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) – is growing rapidly.  Professional hackers, exploiting AI-driven target identification, breach execution, victim extortion, and
ransom collection, all offering their malware as a service to the highest bidder.  

The increasing threat this poses to national economies led the EU to pass the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) setting out specific requirements
for financial service providers concerning risk management. DORA legislated specifically on key areas including reporting accuracy of any ICT-related incidents, and management of third party risk.   

This means that when an attack on any financial services provider occurs, the decisions and actions taken in the hour following an attack will be decisive for the level of organisational impact, and the ultimate survival of the business.  

For financial institutions, process predictability is paramount  

IT teams must prepare thoroughly to anticipate an attack by implementing effective operational resiliency practices to secure their data.  Ongoing training for IT and business teams, together with tools for data identification and visibility, are critical
when it comes meeting regulatory requirements.   

As part of the ICT risk management process to comply with DORA regulations, successful completion of a specialised audit to identify all types, locations and classifications of data and storage infrastructure must be carried out. These rules have been developed to
help prevent and mitigate cyber threats and ensure that financial entities can withstand, respond to, and recover from all types of ICT-related disruptions and threats.  

Compliance with these processes…