The Bank of Valletta, one of Malta’s main banks and the financial institution which accounts for almost half of Malta’s banking transactions, suffered a major cyber attack on Wednesday. The bank said it had closed its branches and ATMs on the small Mediterranean island after realizing hackers were trying to access its systems. Its website was also offline.
Bank of Valletta shut down its operations after a cyber attack https://t.co/kaIZtBf89E #security #feedly
— GRC+ (@grc_plus) February 14, 2019
Experts Comments below:
Felix Rosback, Product Manager at comforte AG:
“Banks are naturally the target of many breaches due to the highly sensitive data stored. Payment data is extremely useful for hackers to commit fraud and they can make a lot of money from selling this information on the dark web. The targeting of banks is also popular among hacktivist groups with non-commercial interests.
Banking is all about trust but, with an increasing attack surface, it’s nearly impossible to prevent breaches. The most important thing payment organizations can do is protect customer data and make sure that their accounts are not affected, with their privacy protected whenever a breach happens.”
Javvad Malik, Security Advocate at AlienVault:
“As more companies become largely digital, they need to take into account the risks associated in a holistic manner.
It is no longer enough to implement security simply at one level such as the website or the app. Rather security needs to be baked in all the way across the endpoint, network, to the servers.
Additionally, detection and response controls need to be in place and tested to gain assurance that during an incident core business functions can be maintained.”
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