“I think it’s important to put in context that cybersecurity risk has been an important focus for a number of years. It’s not just a recent phenomenon,” said Irene Winel, Senior Vice-President of Member Regulation and Strategy, in an interview with Wealth Professional. “However, with growing digitization, an increase in the flow of digital assets, and all sorts of people working from home as a result of the pandemic, those risks have certainly increased in our industry as well as other industries globally.”

Winel declined to provide specific numbers on how much the threat of cyber risks has spiked across the investment industry, but past notices from IIROC point to hotspots of malicious activity. In March, it issued a notice outlining steps firms could take to prevent, detect, and respond to ransomware attacks. Another notice in June last year focused on cloud services and application interfaces, which it said were increasingly being targeted by cyber attackers who are able to identify and exploit specific vulnerabilities.

Describing the past year as a “test of firms’ operational resilience,” Winel said firms have been diligent in putting business continuity plans in place even as they adopted work-from-home arrangements due to the pandemic. She also highlighted the need for firms to upgrade their security, continue to educate themselves on nascent threats, and conduct much-needed tests of their organizational preparedness.

“IIROC’s focus has been over the years and continues to be supporting the smaller and independent firms, who may not have the benefit of being part of larger integrated institutions and all the resources that come with them,” she added.

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Source: https://www.fintechnews.org/supporting-the-investment-industry-against-cyber-threats/