Cyber Attack On Barclays

Barclays is the 7th largest bank in the world having more than 48 million clients around the globe. Since the 1970’s the way of banking began to change worldwide: in 1966 the first credit card (Barclaycard) of Barclays was issued, a year after clients were introduced to the first Barclays’ “robot cashier” which is now better known as ATM. The following events of technological development had sound effect on banking and the way we see it now. With possibility to make almost every transaction, investment or other financial service online, all the banks, including Barclays, moved majority of its data ‘to the clouds’ – to groups of remote servers. This also includes all the confidential information about bank as well as its’ clients. One of the

One of the most recent and most severe cyber attacks that Barclays faced took place in 2013. The plan of attack was simple, but impressive. One of the hackers pretended to be an IT engineer coming to fix computers. However, he attached an interfering gadget to KVM (keyboard video mouse) switching device instead. This gave the hackers an access to the computer network and a possibility to control it remotely. Barclays faced losses of £1.3 million. The first thing that must be done in order to avoid similar attacks is not much related to cyber security: it is more rigorous physical protection of the computers and servers. Since an attacker like above-mentioned has to firstly get physical access to one of the computers from the network, the first solution is to better control external workers, raise the standards of their inspection and ensure the best possible protection of technological equipment. Another security possibility is to examine every supplier of even the smallest parts of network equipment and to make sure they are reliable, cause their equipment is going to access huge amount of secret data. Moving on to the more cyber-related risks’ solutions, IT specialists should avoid unsecure KVM switches. Every KVM switch use with confidential data creates an opportunity to leak data. The best way to secure it is by using KVM switch only on isolated systems – it would leave no

Barclays’ history suggests, that a company needs both: physical safety as well as cyber. Since hackers could pretend to be IT specialists and access the KVM switch, more control should be arranged on external workers. Also, the strict control of the KVM switch should be introduced: using it only on isolated networks with no sensitive data, isolate all the confidential data, controlling vulnerabilities of video and audio equipment and taking care of the designs. Huge data leak scandal suggests, that Barclays should also take care of all stages of accessing data and authentication. The last decision that could help to avoid risks is technical personnel’ education. It would raise awareness of the possible threats, however, it is the most difficult one, since we lack of motivation to be aware of cyber risks and possible updates in our personal life using our computers. Thus, will the workers be motivated to do that at