Lecture series
Cybersecurity and fraud for lenders: the principles
Why lenders are targets, and how they govern and manage the risk: the shared vocabulary of cyber risk, the board's role and the frameworks supervisors refer to, protecting access and data, the fraud that reaches lenders through their customers, responding to and recovering from incidents, and testing and sharing information across the sector. Six lessons, at the level of principles.
6 of 6 lessons published. Lesson 1 is free to read.
Listen to this course
Now playing
Press play to start
- 01Cyber risk and fraud: what they are and why lenders are exposedA lender holds money, personal data and the means to move both. This lesson sets out the vocabulary the financial sector uses for cyber risk, how the risk can be expressed as probability and impact, what the IMF has found about the financial sector's exposure, how fraud reaches lenders through their customers, and the six functions that organise the rest of this course.
- 02Governing cyber risk: the board, the framework and the six functionsWho decides how much cyber risk a lender accepts, and who checks that it stays there. This lesson covers what the G7 and the Basel Committee expect of the board, risk appetite and tolerance, the three lines of defence, operational resilience, the Govern function of the NIST framework, and a simple risk register a board can read.
- 03Protecting access and data: identity, authentication and the customerTo act inside a lender's systems, an attacker needs someone's access: a member of staff's, a partner's or a customer's. This lesson separates identity, authentication and authorisation, explains authentication factors and assurance levels in the NIST digital identity guidelines, shows with a simple formula why limiting guesses matters, and sets out how data are protected and what the FATF says about digital identity for customers.
- 04Fraud in digital lending: false identities, account takeover and scamsA digital lender can lose money without any break-in to its systems: through a borrower who does not exist, a genuine account taken over, or a genuine customer who has been deceived. This lesson describes each route, what the FATF, the Egmont Group and INTERPOL found about cyber-enabled fraud, where controls sit along the life of a loan, how to measure a fraud check with two simple ratios, and how one market has set out who bears the loss.
- 05When an incident happens: response, recovery and reportingNo lender can prevent every incident, so it is judged also by how it responds. This lesson places response within the NIST framework, sets out the seven components of the Financial Stability Board’s toolkit for incident response and recovery, shows with a worked example how loan balances are reconciled after systems are restored, and explains what the Board recommends on reporting incidents to authorities.
- 06Testing, information sharing and learning across the sectorControls and plans are worth only what they do under attack. This lesson sets out the kinds of tests the international guidance describes, from vulnerability assessments to red team tests, explains how a threat-led test is organised, shows with a worked example how a board can follow the findings to closure, and describes how lenders share information with each other and with authorities.
Quiz and certificate 10 questions; those on lesson 1 are free to try. Read every published lesson and score 80% or more for a certificate of completion.
Take the quizCloud for financial services: rules and responsibilities →APIs and system integration for lenders →All courses →