Irish regulator delves deeper into investment companies

The Central Bank of Ireland (CBoI) has conducted onsite inspections of finance service providers and investment firms in a review of industry-wide cyber security policies and procedures.

The CBoI announced that it had further completed a data-gathering task from companies operating in Ireland’s investment market, which included gathering information on business policies and procedures on the mitigation, management, and identification of cyber vulnerabilities and threats.

It said that the review process is ongoing and among its “supervisory priorities for the year”.

A CBoI spokesperson said:

“The integrity and security of firms’ processes and information is critical to the safe and efficient delivery of the services which they offer to their clients. This review will explore the controls around the security of firms’ systems and the procedures governing access to these systems.”

It added that any information concluded from the exercise will dictate new best practices for cyber security, as well as find any areas in which poor practice is being applied and improvement is needed. It said that for any flaws uncovered in a business’ security environment, the Central Bank will do all it can to fix them.

The finance industry is perhaps the most targeted of cyber hackers, for obvious reasons. However, this can lead to a false sense of security for firms in other sectors, since any firm that holds customer data is a potential target for hackers. Before they find their own industry targeted for inspection, they may be wise to review their IT security recruitment policy and determine whether or not they are giving it high enough priority.