or business relationship to make the request seem legitimate or routine. When someone reports a suspicious message, here are four steps to take: 1. Isolating and resetting. Disconnect affected devices and change potentially compromised passwords. 2. Assessing and containing. Determine what the person opened, shared or approved, and review security monitoring tools and logs for related activity. 3. Alerting the appropriate people. Notify IT and cybersecurity, then involve finance, legal, outside forensic specialists and the cyber insurer as needed. 4. Closing the gap. Fix the weakness, run targeted simulations, strengthen email filtering and authentication, and verify payment changes through a separate channel. Don’t investigate the message and the payment activity separately. A compromised email and an unusual transaction may be part of the same incident, so don’t overlook the signals. HELP ACCOUNT HOLDERS BREAK THE URGENCY CYCLE Technology alone can’t stop every scam. Social engineering uses fear and urgency to push account holders into acting before they verify a request. You can help your account holders by reinforcing these two simple habits: • Do not respond to unsolicited messages. Unexpected texts or investment pitches may be the start of a scam. Block the sender rather than respond. • Verify unexpected calls independently. If a caller claims to be from the financial institution, hang up and call the number on the back of the debit card. Offering clear guidance and education to account holders gives them a practical way to stop the attack before money leaves their account. BUILD RESILIENCE ACROSS EVERY CHANNEL We’ve seen how fraud can disregard the lines between payments, cybersecurity, operations, vendors and frontline teams. Be sure to craft your response so that it doesn’t depend on those lines either. Whether the first warning is a card test, phishing message or unavailable digital service, your team needs to know its next steps to protect your institution and its customers. Build confidence through tools that increase their visibility across channels and give clarity on what occurred, and how to contain and remediate the exposure quickly. No financial institution will catch every attempt. Being prepared in advance with clear ownership, practiced response steps and timely information will give teams a better chance to stop one incident before it spreads across systems or payment channels and becomes a much larger issue to contain. Pankaj Sarda is the SVP of product management for enterprise core banking solutions at CSI. Pankaj leads CSI’s product vision, strategy, and execution for financial and technology products, including payments, fraud, financial crimes and core banking solutions. To successfully battle these attacks, community banks need one connected response across cards, payments, cybersecurity, operations and frontline teams. 15 WEST VIRGINIA BANKER
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