Finastra Says Cyber-Attack Sought to Take Advantage of COVID-19 Driven Shift to Remote Operations

Just about all financial services firms have rushed to move operations to as much as possible to remote operations. For many Fintechs, the migration was fairly simple as many had established tech and protocols in place to operate in a virtual environment. For more traditional financial services firms the transition has been more difficult. Bank of America went from 10,000 monitors at home to over 50,000 in a matter of weeks.

For Fintech Finastra, a software provider for Fintechs and old finance, the migration to virtual operations took a different twist. As reported earlier this month, Finastra experienced a cyber-attack where hackers attempted to breach defenses to pilfer data or, even worse, set up a ransomware scam.

On Friday, Simon Paris, CEO of Finastra, told his customers that they believe the attack was timed to take advantage of the fact that thousands of employees were going virtual due to the COVID-19 crisis.

Paris said:

“Late last week, Finastra was subject to a cyberattack that led us to take significant counter-measures to protect our customers, their data, and the integrity of our hosted systems and applications. We believe the attack came deliberately whilst we focused on moving the majority of our global workforce, including several thousand of our colleagues in the Americas, to safer work from home processes in light of COVID-19.”

Paris said the steps taken have enabled Finastra to “return to operations in a controlled, sequential, and secure manner.”

“During the incident, we worked around the clock, aiming to ensure the least-possible disruption for our customers and partners. We provided regular updates to ensure that you had the latest essential information and, as we restore our services, I want you to know that our team was, and always is, 100% focused on our customers and their business needs.”

Paris apologized for the disruption, with Finastra having to pull the plug on an unknown number of servers in use by its many customers.

As of yet, Finastra has said they are unaware of any pilfered data or information. Meanwhile, Finastra said it is working with the relevant authorities as it continues to review, secure and ensure something like this never happens again.



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