The US Federal Reserve suffered a massive IT systems outage today that prevented wire transfers, ACH transactions, and other services from operating. When performing a US wire transfer or ACH withdrawal/deposit, the transaction first goes through the Federal Reserve Bank systems who facilitate the transaction. Yesterday, the Federal Reserve banking systems suffered an outage caused by an “operational error” on their end. In other words, someone made a mistake that caused the systems to go down.
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<p>Identity and access management is the fundamental protection control for reducing security, privacy and operational error events or incidents. The federal reserve IT outage is the latest example of an operational error. Knowing who and what is trying to access the environment, limiting their access only to their true business needs and asking employees to re-authenticate prior to carrying out high risk or high privilege actions are key access control components which reduce operational risk error impacts. Asking employees to re-authenticate prior to the execution of high risk or high privilege actions is commonly known as enhanced multi-factor authentication or enhanced MFA. Always remember that your employees are your most valuable asset, deploying an appropriate identity and access management strategy, program and control set protects them as well as your organization against cybersecurity, privacy and operational risks.</p>