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At many credit unions, cybersecurity has become an essential competency, one that's infused within the basic financial technology infrastructure, and often integrated with or working alongside the institution's core system.

To effectively respond to cyber-dangers, including those posed by the coronavirus outbreaks, credit unions are being challenged to prioritize a more proactive security methodology by implementing procedures such as early breach or threat detection, leveraging staff as a better line of defense, keeping data on only a need-to-know basis, patching promptly after testing, encrypting critical and sensitive data, and using strong authentication.

Allen Eaves

Allen Eaves, director of information security and compliance services at the Monett, Mo.-based fintech provider Jack Henry & Associates, said, "Being in the credit union space of having the data as a managed-security service provider, seeing the different attacks targeting financial institutions, and then, of course, staying in tune with the industry, we've come up with quite a few insights that certainly are very relevant to credit unions and the challenge they are facing today."