Financial Regulatory Forum

By Julie DiMauro and Stuart Gittleman

NEW YORK, Sept. 21 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) - U.S.-based financial services institutions that don’t tell law enforcement agencies about having been victimized by cybercrime are compromising the nation’s security as well as that of their firms, a top Department of Justice official warned this week.

The remarks on Wednesday by Lanny Breuer, assistant attorney general for the department’s criminal division, came as a financial industry group warned banks to be on heightened alert for cyber attacks after Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase experienced unexplained outages on their public websites. (more…)

By Connie Loizos

NEW YORK, April 23 (PeHUB) – If you’re wondering which city in the country is the epicenter of online fraud, it’s New York.

So says ThreatMetrix, a seven-year-old company that combats online fraud by “fingerprinting” the devices used to commit it. The firm has convinced roughly 700 customers – which represent more than 5,000 Websites – to employ its cybercrime-fighting services. (Thomson Reuters is among them.) (more…)

By Robert Kalb

NEW YORK, April 6 (Business Law Currents) – Ever-growing reliance on technology in customer interactions, proprietary data storage and even normal business operations is creating increased risk for companies working to ensure these systems remain uncompromised. As threats of cyber-attacks expand across industries, and given the potential material impact on operations, the security of these digital technologies from internal and external threats is vital.

Prior to newly released SEC guidance, there were no existing requirements to explicitly disclose these cyber-risks. With annual reports now being filed and sent to shareholders, companies have made varied levels of cyber-risk disclosure, and these disclosures may expand in the future with subsequent regulatory oversight. (more…)

By Liz Osborne, Thomson Reuters Accelus contributing author

Nov. 7 (Thomson Reuters Accelus) – These days most people are aware of the dangers of someone stealing and misusing their identity to perpetrate fraud — but less people are familiar with the equivalent crime at a corporate level. Corporate identity theft (CIT) is the fraudulent and deliberate misrepresentation of a company’s identity. It is sometimes also referred to as a “white-collar crime” as it is generally conducted in a “cyber environment” and is not the domain of the stereotypical burglar.

Over the years we have seen a marked increase in this area due to the relative simplicity of the crime and the large degree of “trust” people have in doing business online. It is anticipated that in Australia alone consumers will transact more than A$10 billion dollars in 2012. (more…)