Financial Organizations Are Attacked Mostly by State-Sponsored Organizations, Says Verint Exec

Financial organizations are attacked mostly by state-sponsored organizations that do not really care about money, according to Itzik Vager, vice president of cybersecurity at Verint. Vager spoke at the Dark-Web Economy conference held Wednesday in Tel Aviv by Herzog Fox & Neeman and Herzog Strategic, in partnership with CTech by Calcalist.

“You need to look at the specific methods used by hackers in order to understand their background and where they come from,” he said.

Organizations used to only look internally to identify which cybersecurity tools they needed to protect themselves, Vager explained, adding that this is no longer the case. Now, cybersecurity requires external investigation and to be proactive about emerging threats, he said.

Over 80% of organizations are aware that threat intelligence needs to be part of their cybersecurity strategy, Vager said, but not all assets are the same in terms of risk for an organization. “You better protect the crown jewels of your organization.”

Cyber threat intelligence is not like finding a ticking bomb that will explode tomorrow, according to Vager. Rather, it is there to minimize the risks and better protect the organization, he said.

“You can obtain a lot of information about different malware campaigns from how these attackers are operating. From the dark web, you can gain information about zero-day attacks and their different tools,” Vager explained. “You need to collect information over time, because information appears and then disappears.”