We are witnessing the dawn of a new era of the Internet. With this, more consumers and organisations have embraced digital transformation, resulting in more data than ever becoming accessible online. Alongside our increased use of technology, there has been the need for governments to communicate the threat of cybersecurity attacks more loudly, and for businesses to implement rigorous protective measures.

‍

Yet, despite growing awareness and investment, the frequency, sophistication and scale of attacks increase year after year. Plus, current geopolitical events have taken those threats to a whole new level. In recent days, governments around the world have made urgent addresses to business for them to act now and raise their vigilance. (1,2)

‍

For companies in the finance industry, the risk is particularly elevated. In fact, more than a fifth of all cybercrime is targeted at financial services companies (3). In addition, since the crypto space remains largely unregulated, it is also of particular interest for threat actors of all sorts. So what can be done to protect our interests?

‍

For fintech businesses like ourselves, threats can be broadly divided into two types. The first is ransomware, where attackers encrypt data that is vital to the functioning of a company, and force them to pay for decryption. At Orbital, our cloud-native architecture and strong internal cybersecurity controls protect us from these kinds of threats, ensuring that us and our clients are not at risk.

‍

The most insidious threat comes from social engineering and spearphishing attacks. Attackers attempt to impersonate legitimate communications, in order to gain access and take over employee accounts. This kind of attack on people has become increasingly more daring, sophisticated and credible, and is often very difficult to spot and block (4). In order to defend ourselves at Orbital, we have implemented a number of strong security policies and controls, including 2FA across all our platforms and tools, quarterly training and constant threat monitoring. 

‍

Orbital's objective is to remain ahead of the curve on cybersecurity policies, controls and protocols. As financial services technology advances, we expect achieving compliance with information security regulations and standards to become ever more demanding. Orbital is committed to meeting and exceeding these demands, and continuously improving the protection against cybersecurity threats. Protecting our clients and partners will always remain of utmost priority to our team and the founders of our business.  

‍

1: Biden urgent warning (CNN March 22): CNN

2: UK ICO warning (March 22): The Guardian

3: IBM Security's 2022 X Force Threat Intelligence Index (Feb 22): IBM

4: Spearphishing report: Barracuda

‍

Article author: Guillaume Ruch