Essential Network Performance Metrics for the Financial Industry

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Cybersecurity is a major concern for companies across all industries, especially in the financial sector. The financial industry is facing a unique set of challenges. With vast amounts of sensitive information being exchanged, organizations must take extra precautions to protect their data. To ensure that their networks are safe, financial institutions should be aware of key performance metrics.

Let’s discuss the top network performance metrics for the financial industry and why they’re important for organizations to understand.

Network Performance Metrics to Watch: Bandwidth

There are many instances when you hear phrases like “we don’t have the bandwidth for that.” Often, this conveys a sense that whatever solution or course of action you’ve proposed, the current infrastructure of your credit union can’t handle it. This is what makes bandwidth one of the essential network performance metrics for the financial industry.

Bandwidth is the term used to describe the rate of maximum data transfer in your network over a certain amount of time.

The goal is to monitor and optimize your network’s bandwidth without going over the limit.

If your favorite retail store encounters a bandwidth problem that leads to downtime on its website, it can regain the trust of customers with sales and smart marketing. But credit unions are financial institutions, something that people rely on 24/7. Downtime and bandwidth issues for you can mean the loss of lifelong members.

People want infinite and unlimited access to their financial accounts. They want faster funds transfers, instant deposits, and payment options. This doesn’t leave much room for error. In fact, it makes it more crucial for your credit union to ensure that you have the bandwidth to handle whatever may come. And in these uncertain financial times, there are so many variables that your members will look to you to plan for and protect them from.

Level of Preparedness

Level of preparedness is a network metric that helps you determine how many of the devices on your network are fully patched and up to date. This is an important metric for credit unions and other businesses in the financial sector because it can help you detect and eliminate vulnerable devices and services.

Scanning for and managing vulnerabilities can also greatly reduce security breaches and lower IT and other costs.

Security Incidents/Intrusion Attempts

How many times has an attacker gained access to your information, assets, and/or network? How many times has an attacker attempted to access these items? Those numbers tell a story.

Of course, no cybersecurity effort should be without a thorough and frequent look into security incidents and intrusion attempts. Keeping an eye on these numbers allows you to recognize vulnerability trends more quickly.

Effective network performance keeps your vulnerabilities low. This means your analysis of security incidents and intrusion attempts should yield consistent results over time. That is, your numbers will stay consistent if your IT operations continue to evolve to protect your data from the latest threats.

If your IT program isn’t keeping things secure, time is of the essence. And it saves you time to keep yourself and your credit union leadership teams apprised of the number of incidents month to month and year to year.

Packet Loss

Packet loss measures the number of data packets lost during a transfer between two destinations in your network. Packets are the tiny pieces of data that are being sent and received over digital channels. This includes everything from downloaded files to email correspondence and more. There are many things that cause packet loss from software issues to network congestion or router problems.

Here’s a helpful tutorial on how to test for and fix packet loss issues.

Unidentified Devices on Internal Networks

Though most people imagine a hacking or breach attempt as having originated from “outside the castle walls,” it’s important to remember that every employee and member who accesses your network has the ability to corrupt it.

Employees can introduce viruses and other malicious code via their personal devices and habits. This can lead to issues as you are working toward building an efficient IT network.  

Company vs. Peer Performance

A high-level KPI to watch for in the list of network performance metrics for the financial industry is company versus peer performance. An efficient IT network, especially in the financial sector, should be able to keep performance above the average level for your industry.

You can compare a range of basic network metrics, including many of the ones we listed above. There are several reporting companies that have industry averages available online for you to compare against.

This is a metric that is more important when it comes to positioning your success in the industry. In essence, you won’t need this metric to improve specific cybersecurity efforts. But you will need these comparisons to show your board members and other credit union leaders that you are aware of the industry standards and are working toward and achieving those levels at the time you report to these governing bodies.

Network Connection

Checking connection is a big performance metric for ensuring optimal network performance. This metric shows you the connectivity between all the devices, nodes, and systems in your network.

You can use this metric to find and minimize service interruptions before they cost you customers and important data or operations.

IMS uses the premier backup solution for credit unions. This allows you to keep your credit union data up to date and stored securely at an offsite IMS data center. In addition to backup and recovery, this Rubrik backup solution also includes continuous data protection, ransomware recovery, replication and disaster recovery, virtualized environments, and Windows and Unix protection.

2023 Credit Union Cybersecurity Predictions

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As technology advances, so does the need for heightened credit union cybersecurity measures. When it comes to cybersecurity, credit unions must stay up to date with the latest threats in order to keep their members safe and secure.

As the world of technology continues to evolve, so do the challenges of keeping our data secure. Credit unions in particular face a unique set of cybersecurity threats that must be anticipated and prepared for. We will discuss how credit unions can leverage digital transformation to protect themselves and their members from malicious cyberattacks as well as explore emerging technologies that may be used to combat potential threats.

In this article, we will take a look at what experts predict are some of the major credit union cybersecurity predictions for 2023.

Credit Union Cybersecurity Will Be a Top Risk Management Concern

According to a recent NCUA article, the top 4 risk factors affecting the financial industry in 2023 include interest rate risk, liquidity risk due to inflation concerns, credit risk due to housing and loan market concerns, and cybersecurity risks due to geopolitical issues and growing dynamic threats.

In July 2022, NCUA approved a rule that requires credit unions to notify NCUA no later than 72 hours after they reasonably believe a reportable cyber incident has occurred. They have created and optimized their ACET (Automated Cybersecurity Evaluation Toolbox) and offer many free resources and checklists to credit unions aiming to adjust and evaluate risk management concerns for the new year.

“Passwordless” Solutions Are at the Forefront of Financial Cybersecurity Solutions

“Passwordless” solutions like MFA (multi-factor authentication) will continue to be a powerful tool in every credit union’s cybersecurity best practices toolkit. As the use of cloud computing and hybrid work and customer service solutions rises, so does the need to ensure all data, no matter where it is stored or sent, is protected by more than a password.

Password auto-fill options like the Google Smart Lock system continue to be popular in both personal and professional settings, and that can create rifts in security. But with MFA, those rifts can often be closed or avoided completely due to the hacker’s need to have more access and devices in order to complete the authentication process.

Because apps and cloud usage have exponentially expanded the attack surface for credit unions, these new technologies require advanced solutions that look much different than the ones that previously governed in-house servers and networks.

Phishing & Email Attacks Among Top Cybersecurity Threats for 2023

A recent article from Forbes outlines the top 5 scams that businesses should be watching for in 2023. They include:

  • Business email compromise (BEC): this includes the use of fake email accounts to harbor or spread threatening software and includes phishing attempts, ransomware, and more.
  • Malware and Ransomware: due to the current geopolitical climate surrounding the conflict between Ukraine and Russia, many political cybersecurity experts believe Russia will use its resources to continue launching ransomware attacks against those governments and entities that do not agree with its current political agenda.
  • Crypto Scams and “pig butchering” scams: Named for the phrase “raising a pig for slaughter,” these attacks start with a friendly message that entices the recipient to create an online relationship with the sender (hacker). As that trust grows, the hacker will then start questioning the recipient about their interests in crypto in an effort to get them to buy into a website that is reputed to have made someone a lot of money, only for that crypto to be stolen from the recipient’s accounts.
  • Cybercrime cash-out process innovation: This is an evolving scam that started with hackers and bad actors asking unsuspecting and uneducated individuals to send gift cards or cryptocurrency in an effort to get around the “cash-out,” where payments that surpass $10,000 and other high-value transactions can be tracked and flagged for suspicious activity.
  • Scamming as a Service: Virtual marketplaces in underground websites are creating and selling end-to-end services that “enable low-skill threat actors to fill their carts and pay with crypto,” Forbes says. These services include full sets of stolen credentials, ready-to-deploy ransomware, phishing, other attacks, and more. Even the bad guys love a good package deal.

Multi-Year Strategic Plans Work Best for Cybersecurity Success

Because cybersecurity threats are ever-changing, credit union and financial industry leaders must be prepared to put their money and their time into multi-year strategic plans. Cybersecurity is a complex beast, and everything and everyone that interacts with a network can create potential threat opportunities.

A mix of internal and external threats are often already beginning to make their way through secure areas, files, and devices throughout the year, and an improvement in key performance metrics, like a decrease in ransomware or phishing attempts, is no reason to ease off or to decrease your institution’s budget for cybersecurity personnel, services, and software.

Organizations with Cybersecurity Network Architecture Will Reduce Financial Security Costs By 90%

Does that sound too good to be true? It’s a certainty by 2024, according to Gartner’s cybersecurity predictions for 2023-2025. Those organizations that switch to a more holistic cybersecurity approach that encompasses not just their devices and network, but all technology that has access to or is integrated with it, are expected to see a 90% reduction in the final costs of security incidents.

Credit union cybersecurity threats are serious and should be caught early to minimize damage and data theft. That’s why IMS offers Polaris Radar, an anomaly detection software that enables your system to recover more quickly and easily from an attack on your credit union network security. Don’t get caught unawares, especially when your members’ personal and financial information may hang in the balance.

Top 4 Disaster Recovery Concerns and 2023 Cybersecurity Trends

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2022 has almost come and gone already. Your credit unions are gearing up for holiday promotions and member requests, and before you know it, you’ll be writing “2022” on your transaction records and deposit slips and then crossing it out because you forgot we’re in 2023 now!

We all make mistakes, and some are inevitable, that’s why we wanted to shed some light on the most common disaster recovery concerns as well as highlight some of the biggest 2023 cybersecurity trends.

Mobile Banking is a Big Target

Because your members are doing more and more of their financial housekeeping from their smartphones, there are several reports that mobile banking malware attacks are on the rise – seeing an increase of more than 50% since 2019.

Today, the majority of fraudulent transactions are being initiated from mobile devices, and that includes things like malware, data tampering, phishing attacks, ransomware incidents, and data loss.

Mobile banking will likely remain a top concern for your credit union branches (and for financial institutions as an industry) through 2023 and beyond.

Enhancing the Digital Experience

The work-from-home and remote solutions culture is still going strong in 2022 – expect to see an increased fluidity with which people are completing their work, personal appointments, shopping, finances, and so much more.

This includes optimizing your member-facing digital and mobile assets and services, as well as increasing the efficiency of your employee offboarding. Getting non-employees off your servers and out of your access windows is arguably more important than getting them the access they need at onboarding.

Without access, a new employee’s productivity is slowed, sure, but without timely access revocation, your former employees can slow the productivity of your entire staff.

It’s no longer about training new hires faster, it’s about keeping the incoming and outgoing access requests efficient to minimize gaps in your access security.

Endpoint Security Will Continue to Be Big

One of the most common 2023 cybersecurity trends and disaster recovery concerns includes endpoint security. All these remote and mobile access points mean your credit union’s network has never been more vulnerable from more angles. The IoT (Internet of Things) creates more opportunities for people and businesses to connect, but that same connection can be used to exploit your credit union’s network vulnerabilities.

We’ll see bigger pushes for remote and virtual desktops, increased endpoint security, and more. Data and productivity protection will become top-priority items.

Downtime is something that many of your members are not going to tolerate – and that means using your resources to create big bank solutions on small business and independent credit union budgets.

To help determine your direction for 2023 cybersecurity success, the latter part of 2022 and the first part of 2023 are the perfect windows of opportunity for your credit unions and branches to do some thorough vulnerability assessments.

Including MFA (multifactor authentication) and other access, controls should be educational and operational frontrunners – keeping the right people in and the wrong people out can decrease your chances of a data breach substantially.

Cloud-Based Business Continuity

Too much of your endpoint management and security resides outside the walls of your credit union branches. There are so many branch-sharing initiatives and other remote and mobile banking trends that will continue to raise disaster recovery concerns and top the charts for 2023 cybersecurity trends.

Because of this, your solutions should follow a hybrid model. Storing all your important data and programs in a single location (whether onsite or not) can create vulnerabilities in your disaster recovery strategy.

Cloud-based solutions like those offered at IMS can help diversify your data and create more avenues from which to recover, should your credit union start 2023 with an unexpected breach or data loss attempt.

For some great resources on disaster recovery, check out the Disaster Recovery Journal’s recent article, “Are People Top of Mind in Your 2023 Business Continuity Strategy?”

Need Help with Your Disaster Recovery Plan?

To help address your disaster recovery concerns and set you on the right track to tackle any 2023 cybersecurity trends, our team at IMS wants to offer you an all-inclusive backup service with disaster recovery, too!

Just like your credit union’s main goal is to educate and serve your members, IMS is here to support credit unions with unique and tailored solutions that fit into your CU’s operations. We don’t send you solutions that you have to adjust your credit union network and IT operations for, we are all about filling IT and cybersecurity gaps for CUs large and small.

It’s time someone helped take care of you – reach out to IMS today and let us know how we can help!

National Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2022: 4 Major Takeaways

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October was National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, and we wanted to share some of our favorite insights we found throughout October. The importance of cybersecurity should include several focus areas.

Your network health and security should be a priority all year. As threats evolve and emerge, so should your cybersecurity strategies. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed about the state of your credit union’s security, but there are so many tools and experts ready to elevate your networks and provide you with powerful solutions.

The Human Element is Paramount

The theme for the 2022 National Cybersecurity Awareness Month is “See Yourself in Cyber,” which focuses on the human element of cybersecurity strategy. Because you can have the best protection and tools for your network, but more than 90% of cyberattacks are initiated (usually unintentionally) by human error.

From tellers to your CEO, and IT professionals to branch managers, the human element of cybersecurity is made up of everyone using your networks. And because credit unions are responsible for holding the life savings and other monetary assets of their members, it’s important to have all your employees trained on the most up-to-date cybersecurity practices.

Teaching your employees about the importance of cybersecurity includes showing them how to secure their everyday operations (with passwords, multifactor authentication, logging off computers instead of leaving them running or unlocked, etc.), how to recognize malicious content, emails, and more, as well as informing them how to report and react to cybersecurity breaches when they occur.

Learn about Your Members’ Habits, & Correct Them If Necessary

“Think before you click” is another way to underscore the importance of cybersecurity, especially after National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. It’s a catchy phrase that packs a punch.

Many of your members are using their credit union information in third-party payment apps and on a host of diverse retail websites. The current “Tiktok made me buy it” trends have sparked innumerable spam accounts that are pretending to carry products that have gotten popular on social media and other platforms.

Your employees and members aren’t IT experts, but you can give them the tools to help recognize when and where they should be sharing credit union account information, or personal information in general.

Check to ensure that websites are PCI compliant, and teach your members how to recognize warning signs and scam accounts, emails, and sites.

Passwords, Passwords, Passwords

Weak passwords are often the downfall of an individual or credit union network. Sharing passwords, keeping them taped to your computer monitor at work or at home – we’re all tired of changing our passwords and finding out that we need uppercase, lowercase, special character, and minimum character length requirements.

But all these elements underscore the importance of cybersecurity: it’s in the details. Strong passwords are a great primary line of defense for several reasons. When you add each of these infuriating characteristics to your passwords, it would take a hacker nearly two decades to figure out what it is and leverage your data and networks in their favor. With that kind of security, it makes the hassle of creating these complex passwords worth it.

Update Your Software

The cyber threat landscape is always changing, and your software should be updated to keep up with those changes.

Cyber attacks aren’t growing because people refuse to put safeguards in place, they’re growing because more people than ever are carrying out core business and personal functions completely online, and the tools you had in place last year or even last month are already being circumvented by the latest threats.

Many credit unions (and businesses in general) hate losing productivity to time-consuming updates, but the importance of cybersecurity often lies most heavily in the preparation, not the reaction.

Here are a few tips:

  • Try to schedule disruptive or in-depth updates for downtime – stay away from business hours if possible.
  • Remind your team and your members early and often if you have updates that will render parts of your system unavailable for any amount of time.
  • if possible, turn on automatic updates – this prevents you and your employees from missing or skipping an important software patch or update.
  • Evaluate your software regularly – are there other products that could do things better or more efficiently? Look into them or create a review program to ensure your current solutions are the best solutions for your credit union.
  • Listen to IT department recommendations – costly mistakes can be made if you dismiss your resident cybersecurity experts. They’re not being alarmist, they’re telling you what will happen if you don’t take preventative action.

It’s Not “If,” It’s “When” – Why Your CU Needs Cloud-based Backups

Automated and unattended, IMS’s Rubrik backup solutions allow you to prepare for the worst without co-opting crucial hours of your management and IT teams’ time. Securing your data when there is a breach or data loss incident can be quick and easy.

IMS Rubrik includes backup and recovery, continuous data protection, ransomware recovery, replication and disaster recovery, virtualized environments, as well as Windows and Unix protection.

Reach out to us today to learn more about our solutions and the importance of cybersecurity. 

Ransomware Concerns: Why You Should Be Fixing Data Management Problems

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Ransomware concerns are often categorized as cybersecurity issues rather than a result of data management problems. But there are emerging insights from the cybersecurity industry that underscore the importance of data management and other proactive technology programs and software in the fight against ransomware threats.

Here’s why you should be using data management to combat ransomware threats.

The Cost of a Ransomware Attack Is More Than Just the Ransom

Ransomware costs businesses more in the resulting downtime than it does in the ransom payment, according to TechCrunch.

Downtime causes a ripple effect that can be felt throughout your organization. From incident response measures to legal fees and support, not to mention the impact to customer experience, downtime caused by ransomware can get pricey fast.

Depending on the size of your business, that ransom amount can also be quite high. Your data management problems are only exacerbated by a successful ransomware attack.

Credit unions and other financial institutions are seeing a huge uptick in ransomware attacks, and that trend doesn’t look like it will slow down anytime soon.

IMS can help set you up for success and save up to 80% of primary storage costs, leaving you with more capital to run your business.

Good Data Management Is Always Learning

If your credit union were a smart house, data management is the technology that runs all your settings and cycles. Imagine your smart thermostat, for a moment. You can set it to learn how you manage your home’s temperature throughout the day. Pretty soon, the system will use these patterns to create a schedule that best fits your usage.

That’s how IMS’s machine learning works with your data. The software learns how your credit union employees and executives use data and where it travels, and it will notice when things go off track, like when someone tries to hack into your servers or gain access to sensitive data without authorization.

As your data management problems emerge, your IMS software can help you navigate to the most comprehensive solutions through compliance and data discovery tools.

Don’t Forget about the Big Picture

Your data is likely housed across physical servers, cloud systems, and other legacy processes. But because these fragmented processes can’t give you a good idea of how much data you have, or what it looks like in its entirety, you are setting your credit union up for failure.

To continue the house analogy: imagine you are at home, and a fire breaks out. When you submit your losses to your home insurance, you also submit photo and video evidence of your assets that were in the home – televisions, gaming systems, children’s toys, clothes, furniture, kitchen appliances, etc. Your insurance company then cuts you a check for your loss of those items.

If you don’t have this big picture view of your home, you may miss important things that were lost.

Your credit union data is the same. If you have no concept of the scope of your data, where it is, and how much exists, ransomware attackers can steal and corrupt files that are crucial to your credit union operations, but that you didn’t realize were missing until much later. Data management problems often require looking at specific data items and areas, but also need the context of your big picture data usage and storage to use as a framework or blueprint.

Visibility and pattern analysis (like those solutions offered through IMS Data Discovery) can show you what’s happening in every part of your data management system. Once you have this framework, you can see how your data is being used, who is using it, and when. And with machine learning, those patterns we talked about earlier – and any disruptions that happen within them – are easily traceable and visible.

The Role of Data Backup & Recovery

Preventing attacks should be at the top of the list of ransomware concerns. Much like driving a car or keeping your house locked, it’s easier to use defensive tactics to prevent issues, rather than to wait until the issues arise to address them. Even so, your credit union data is still likely going to be targeted by bad actors, and that means your reaction to an attack has to be as stronger or stronger than your attempts at prevention were.

Two important pieces of pulling yourself out of data management problems include data backup and disaster recovery.

Because ransomware often targets the data that will halt operations and cripple your credit union’s business, your data backups need to be housed safely, and at least one copy should – by best practice – be housed offsite.

And disaster recovery is your failsafe. Once the cybersecurity walls have been breached, disaster recovery is your most important next step.

Ransomware cripples people and businesses by leveraging the lifeblood of their operations – digital data. If you don’t set up ways to get that data back without going through the hackers, your credit union could face huge issues, up to and including the shutdown of your business operations.

Invest in the Best Credit Union Data Management Solutions

Data management problems require multi-faceted solutions. And IMS is your guide for cohesive and comprehensive data management strategies that fit your credit union.

For those looking to increase your effectiveness at preparing for and preventing ransomware incidents, IMS offers Anomaly Detection through a technology called Polaris Radar. You’ll be able to recover faster while increasing your system’s intelligence. See how your data moves and changes and let Polaris Radar use machine learning to detect and alert you of anomalous behavior. 

Cybersecurity Best Practices for Credit Union Lending

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Your credit union members are likely more worried about making sound and safe financial decisions, especially as housing and living costs rise with an unprecedented hike in inflation. In the last several decades, these costs have quadrupled in most areas of the country, while wages have yet to even double. That means your members and prospective members are looking for smart and secure lending options.

July through September is the peak lending season for most financial institutions, and you don’t want to alienate prospects by employing less-than-optimal lending cybersecurity.

There are several ways to incorporate cybersecurity into your credit union lending process and practices.

Start with a Good Foundation – Or Build It

Large, for-profit banks are the only organizations in the financial sector that can afford to create a proprietary system for loan processes. The rest of us, including your credit union, must rely on strategic planning, and smart tools.

Lending cybersecurity, like cybersecurity in other high-risk industries, can’t successfully rely on DIY programs to create a solid digital wall of protection around networks and systems within it.

Your cybersecurity program should have all-encompassing strategies, not just piecemeal solutions. Think of it this way: while you can build a boat with several hundred pieces of wood or metal and create a strong enough hull for the boat to float, you’ve now got hundreds of seams and potential cracks just waiting to be breached. Whereas, if you create the hull using something more akin to one seamless piece, your chances of water seeping in are much lower.

A good foundation includes things like reviewing your current digital landscape and cybersecurity. The first step is looking for potential security gaps. These gaps can be interwoven throughout this landscape: in data collection, storage, and encryption protocols as well as third-party vendor interfaces, mobile apps and platforms, servers, cameras, social media accounts, and more.

These things need to be audited regularly, starting from the first days of your newly integrated systems.

Simplicity is Key – But There’s a Limit

Lending cybersecurity mainly relies on the implementation of practices, education, and technology solutions that minimize the risk of a cyberattack. If you have fewer holes in your systems, that a hacker will find a way through them is going to be much smaller.

That’s why simplicity in your lending practices and tasks is key. The loan process is complicated by nature, but the more seamless you can make it for your members and your staff, the better the outcome will be.

User error is often touted as one of the most common causes of data breaches. The goal of your loan programs and the steps you employ to carry them out should be to create a user-friendly experience without skimping on network security and other precautionary measures.

For example, employing multi-factor authentication in parts of your data and lending information collection process is inherently more complicated than single-factor authentication, but you are trading safety for convenience. Two-factor authentication is still the best choice when it comes to collecting and storing lending data.

Finding the balance between “easy-to-use” and “optimal protection” should be the simple target you aim for in credit union lending cybersecurity.

Here’s a great article from Medium about cybersecurity in the mortgage process. It goes into more detail about how complexity is the “worst enemy of security.”

Automating Compliance Increases Lending Cybersecurity

Lending cybersecurity is not the only way to protect your credit union loan processes. In fact, much like the risks for cyberattacks have increased, lending compliance issues are also on the rise.

Because compliance is crucial to the efficacy of your credit union, maintaining that credibility should always be a top priority regardless of whether your credit union is growing, merging, or simply focused on optimizing current business operations.

There are several benefits to automating your compliance tasks. Automation is primarily used to ensure that there is no impact to normal operations and production. There is also no learning curve – compliance automation means machine learning drives for you – it is constantly improving and identifying potential violations of internal compliance policies by tracking sensitive data nd where it goes.

By automating your compliance processes with tools and software like IMS’s Polaris Sonar, you can quickly reduce sensitive data exposure without having to add to your current infrastructure or allot employee time towards completing these tasks.

Anomaly Detection – Recover Faster

Cyberattacks on financial institutions are inevitable – your credit union holds a wealth of assets and hackers are always looking for ways to exploit your security systems to take some of those assets for themselves.

And with ransomware on the rise, it’s important to implement the most effective strategy for recognizing ransomware attacks early and defending against them.

IMS has anomaly detection solutions with Polaris Radar to track your data changes over time, replace manual recoveries for minimal business disruption, and increase intelligence with machine learning.

Make sure your credit union lending and all financial data is never used against you for ransom. Learn more about partnering with IMS today by requesting a consultation.

Hidden Ways Your Credit Union Data Is at Risk

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The importance of protecting your credit union data can’t be overstated. Unfortunately, there are many ways your data can be stolen, corrupted, or lost. From less-than-vigilant password protocols to accidental deletions, malware, and more – each of these threats presents unique challenges and accesses specific vulnerabilities in your cybersecurity and other data systems and puts your data at risk.

There are also many undetected ways you put your data at risk. Many loopholes and vulnerabilities are often found after they’ve been exploited if you don’t know where to look or what to look for. Let’s discuss some of the hidden ways your credit union data is at risk.

Personal Device Usage

Personal devices are used for business projects and functions during working hours but are not company property. There are tons of different types of personal devices, and most of them are connected. This includes things like smartphones, laptops and tablets, smartwatches and accessories, and more.

When you allow your employees to use their own devices to carry out credit union business, you are putting your data at risk of being lost or stolen. Personal devices also aren’t held to the same security and update standards as your company-specific technology.

Device management is a major piece of post-COVID cybersecurity. Each device that connects to your credit union’s network is creating opportunities for breaches because it puts your CU and your member information in more hands, and not all of those hands will treat that data correctly. Whether the data is lost through malicious activities or unintentional employee mishandling, it’s important to think through the amount and types of devices that you want to be able to connect to your data and network systems.

Insufficient Backup Policies

Backups are diverse and indispensable tools for safeguarding your credit union data. But that doesn’t mean every backup works the same way.

When you are exploring and auditing your backup policies, it’s important to not only think about the time and convenience of the backup functions – making sure your backups are run regularly, capturing all your credit union data, and not hindering other network functions.

But it is also wise to think about how long it will take for your backups to restore your data. If an onsite server fails, do you know how long it will take for your offsite backups to restore it? Will it take a full 24 hours? Do you have adequate offsite backups?

The mistake here is installing backup software or protocols and then forgetting about it. These systems, though they should never fail, should be regularly checked to ensure that you are capturing all the data you need to be backing up. Business processes change, and IT protocols are always evolving.

IMS offers backup services tailored specifically to credit unions. That means these systems were built with your specific data types in mind. Your data backups are automated and your data is secured and stored offsite at an IMS data center.

Digital Supply Chain Weaknesses

The digital supply chain is essentially the network that is created throughout the supply chain to increase integration, dynamic processes, and predictive supply chain operations.

If you have third-party software that you used to create your credit union’s app, which then supplies products and services to your enrolled members, this is just one example of the different ways digital content and programming can intersect with and affect your cybersecurity and your credit union data. For example, a breach in 2021 involved the Kaseya supply chain. Kaseya offers remote management services that many credit unions in the USA use.

Understaffed and Overburdened IT Staff

Credit unions aren’t like big banks. Some are standalone small businesses with a handful of staff members that are diligently serving their communities. Other credit unions are large and can be run much like a corporation.

But right now, there are staffing shortages everywhere. The pandemic has caused what many are calling the Great Resignation, and that means more people than ever are overburdened at work.

And while this is a big hurdle to overcome no matter what industry or department you work in, IT shortages can be much more expensive than just the overtime and loss of productivity costs.

If your IT department isn’t able to keep up with all the day-to-day maintenance, employee and member requests, and other top priority items, something is going to eventually slip through the cracks.

The hiring shortages and issues aren’t going away quickly, and that means technology-based solutions should be your next step. Luckily, that’s what IMS has been doing for credit unions and credit union data for years.

Combat Known and Unknown Data Threats with IMS Today

IMS is the leading data management, backup, disaster recovery, and IaaS service provider for credit unions. Whether you are trying to increase protection from bad actors, unhappy employees, or unprecedented threats like staff mistakes and natural disasters, IMS can help.

Our private cloud services have been designed with credit union data in mind:

With these and other services, tailored specifically to your CU needs, IMS is the perfect solution to help assuage your data fears as we become increasingly reliant on technology and stored data solutions.

How to Embrace the Future of Digital Banking

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When we talk about the future of banking, a lot of that future is rooted in the digital transformation that will take place in the next several years. Online loan applications, cryptocurrency – these services and more will be the differentiators for success as we move through 2022 and beyond. Here’s how your credit union can embrace the future of digital banking.

What Is Digital Banking?

Digital banking used to mean your members could log into an online account to see their balances and perform funds transfers from one financial account to another. But today, digital banking has expanded so much that your members rarely – if ever – have to visit one of your physical locations to perform any financial activity that will be run through your systems.

It’s not just about convenience, digital banking is about ultra-convenience for your members. Netflix, Amazon, and social media sites use data and other digital tools to make every user’s experience highly personalized – this is becoming a standard to which all B2C businesses are expected to reach in order to maintain member satisfaction.

Embracing Embedded Banking

You don’t have to leave your house to get groceries, prescriptions, Christmas presents, dog food, or to pay your mortgage or car payments anymore – and members like it this way. That one-stop-shop website model is becoming the expectation for your members. Embedded banking may seem like a complex phrase, but it just means that your members are doing their banking without having to visit a bank or credit union website, app, or physical location.

An example of embedded banking is the presence of mortgage applications and services being promoted on real estate sites where your members are browsing available homes in their desired area. Rather than creating financial services that must be accessed separately from the need they are born from, we’ll see more and more companies partnering to allow for end-to-end transactions. You can go to a car dealership and get a loan right then and there through partnerships between the dealership and their chosen financial institution, and savvy consumers will gravitate towards that all-inclusive model because it’s more convenient.

Facial Recognition

One of the fastest-growing authorization tools for financial accounts is biometric access. This includes fingerprints and, most recently, facial recognition. 15% to 20% of US financial institutions are already using facial recognition, coupled with other best practices when it comes to multi-factor authentication, to give members access to their financial information online.

Virtual Branches

The need to “speak to a representative” will never go away. People still like talking to and connecting with real people when they give a business their patronage. Since the start of the pandemic, virtual branches have become increasingly popular as a way to bridge the gap between in-person interaction and the convenience of digital banking solutions.

Virtual branches are digital platforms that simulate the conversation that occurs in a regular branch and rely on diverse communication tools like web, mobile chat, video, co-browsing, and document or screen sharing, according to American Banker.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service: Serve Members While We Cover Your Servers

Your data, servers, and digital banking operations shouldn’t need babysitting. That’s why IMS offers configured resources that meet your unique needs through Infrastructure-as-a-Service. We tailor our program to your specification to ensure our solutions are straightforward, flexible, and pay-as-you-go so you can take advantage of premier cloud services at affordable prices.

Browse these and other offerings here on our website or contact us today!

Debunking 3 More Credit Union Cloud Myths

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In a previous blog post, we debunked 3 credit union cloud computing myths, and we’re here to do it again. Cloud computing has been gaining popularity for years, but the events of 2020 and 2021 have accelerated widespread adoption. And with that rapid change comes new concerns. Let’s debunk 3 more common credit union cloud myths.

Myth: The Cloud is Only Good for Backup & Disaster Recovery

This myth is a little difficult to debunk because we must omit just a single word (“only”) from the myth to make it true. Cloud computing is a secure way to back up your data, and it’s also an effective option for disaster recovery practices.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg. For example, IMS’s Private Cloud Services also include:

  • Infrastructure-as-a-Service provides a safe and secure home for your servers
  • Core Hosting: IMS can manage and operate your credit union’s core system to whatever extent you need
  • Virtual Desktop provides a complete virtual workspace, a crucial element in this newly remote world.
  • Colocation Services keeps your data perpetually available by adding redundancy to your systems.    

Myth: One Cloud Will Rule Them All

There’s also a prevailing double-edged cloud myth, and it is that you either need to be extra meticulous in choosing the one cloud solution that will “do it all,” or that once you have broken the seal and start using one cloud service, you’ll end up needing dozens or hundreds of different cloud providers in order to successfully do all the things you were already achieving with your in-house or data center-based system.

Many organizations choose a multi-cloud strategy, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have success with one cloud, and it also doesn’t mean that you will have to collect cloud management systems the way people collect stamps or comic books.

Myth: Cloud Data = Public Data

Another extremely common cloud myth is that once it’s in the cloud, your data is accessible to the public – as in everyone. There are tons of jokes in movie scenes about how once something is up in the cloud, you can’t get it down, and the information (no matter how private or incriminating) is now broadcast for all the world to see.

The Florida Institute of  Certified Public Accountants shared some great insight on why this notion is a myth: “There are public clouds (shared environments) and private clouds (dedicated environments.”

Public clouds like Google, for example, have multiple tenants and typically operate under pay-as-you-go models. A private cloud, however, is a single-tenant environment where all hardware and network components are dedicated to one client (or business).

Either way, there are no options where storing your information in a cloud network is akin to putting your data on a public billboard or allowing random individuals access to your credit union’s sensitive business or member-based data.

Bust Your Credit Union Cloud Myths – See the Results for Yourself

IMS offers Private Cloud Services that can help you safeguard your member data at all times, but especially when your credit union is most vulnerable. Contact IMS for more information.

Business Continuity Planning Best Practices

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We’ve talked previously on our blog about the difference between credit union disaster recovery and business continuity planning. A business continuity plan (BCP) is a series of protocols created to make sure an organization can keep operating during a disaster, and a disaster recovery plan is often a subset of the BCP that specifically plans for recovering lost data and restoring failed infrastructure. But no one could have guessed when we wrote that article in the fall of 2019 that we would have such an unprecedented year in 2020.

Here are some business continuity planning best practices for your credit union.

The Evolution of Business Continuity Planning

Originally, business continuity planning was created to focus on how businesses could plan ahead for natural disasters and similar events – fire, tornadoes, hurricanes, etc. – but it quickly evolved to include cyber events – hackers, file corruption, system bugs, and the like.

Today, business continuity planning is more about assessing threats and risks and creating comprehensive protocols for increasingly complex businesses.

It’s become more about gap analysis and protecting your business than creating a step-by-step plan to merely react to issues that come up.

Document Core Functions – Focus on Details

This may seem like a no-brainer, but one of the first steps to creating a workable and comprehensive business continuity plan is to document the core functions of your credit union. These are the services that are central to your business’s success and that will have the greatest impact on that business, should something happen to your facilities, staff, equipment, or networks.

It’s also important to document the resources that will be required to fill these business functions and roles. The more detailed you can make your plans, the more prepared you will be in the event of a business interruption.

Mature Your Business Continuity Plan

Maturing your business continuity plan is just as important as creating it. Think of it like this: you have to have fire extinguishers inspected and replaced when they expire, right? The same is true for your BCP.

In this digital age, technology changes and upgrades so swiftly that it’s easy to become fatigued trying to keep up. But with business continuity planning, having an outdated plan is just as bad – if not worse – than having no plan at all.

Be sure to review and test your BCP on a regular basis. This means testing and working through all facets of the plan, not just a few items. Practice makes perfect, and spending quality time ensuring your plan is still effective can save you a lot of headaches later.

Develop a Communication Strategy

This goes hand in hand with the last point. Your plan is only as good as the people executing it, so frequent testing and practice drills are great ways to develop helpful and effective communication strategies before you need them.

Taking the time to educate your staff about business continuity planning is a great way to instill these ideas in the company culture, and to smooth out communication issues early on.

Have Offsite, Cloud-Based Backups

We know how important it is to safeguard your member data, especially when disaster strikes. Having cloud-based backups housed offsite is a great way to ensure the integrity of your files without having to worry about the what-ifs.

IMS has virtual private cloud services and solutions like core hosting, virtual desktop, disaster recovery, and more for your credit union. Contact us today for more information.