Building Immunity to Cyber-Attacks

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The minds of American consumers have been occupied these past 14 months with a wave of new distractions and concerns triggered by the pandemic – social distancing, learning how to work from home effectively, chasing down unemployment and stimulus payments, and securing ­vaccine appointments, to name a ­­­­few – ­giving cyber criminals ample time to concoct new schemes centered on exploiting consumers during their most vulnerable moments.

And officials warned that credit unions should be on high alert due to the growing threat of cyber-attacks, which can strike credit unions directly as well as indirectly through member data compromises and breaches of third-party vendor data. On April 22, the NCUA issued a statement warning of increasing ­cybersecurity ­vulnerabilities for federally-insured credit unions and financial services market participants, including ransomware, malware and phishing attacks, identity theft, denial of service, ATM skimming, pandemic-themed attacks and supply chain attacks – the latter being a significant threat due to the multiple parties that must work together to deliver financial services to consumers.