Banks Make Security Technology Top Priority

The chaos on Wall Street is prompting financial institutions to make security technology an even higher priority, say tech venders.

Consider database security company Secerno. This company credits financial institutions’ heightened interest in security technology to angry, laid-off employees, in part.

Insider attacks are expected to rise as banks merge and layoffs are rampant, says Sam Paone, Secerno’s general manager for the Americas.

“Data security is the stepchild of the budget often,” he says, noting it does not get the spotlight until many security “accidents” take place. “There have been enough traffic accidents.”

He also attributes these insider attacks to the amount of data moving around from bank to bank. “This makes it more chaotic,” he says.

To help keep security tight, Secerno offers a firewall for data of sorts, which keeps false alarms at bay. To achieve this, Secerno relies on modeling behavior. “Our product monitors and builds a model of what is an acceptable behavior,” Paone says.

To further address the heightened focus on data integrity, Secerno recently launched the Security Consultants Programme (SCP). This tool allows security consultants to deliver data stream analysis services, which helps organizations audit the use of data for compliance. The SCP also aims to let organizations understand the risk profile to their databases.