Cyber Security in Financial Instititions

Research – Read the scenario and answer the questions below.

Scenario – A routine financial audit reveals that several people receiving paychecks are not, and have never been, on payroll. A system review indicates they were added to the payroll approximately one month prior, at the same time, via a computer in the financial department.
• What is your initial response to this information?
• Where would you start your investigation?
• Do you have tools in place that would have detected something?
• Would this be a physical attack, cyber attack, or both? How so?

Additional Information – After you address the above questions based upon the scenario, you receive the below additional information:

You confirm a computer in the payroll department was used to make the additions and is reaching out to a website outside of the organization about every 10 minutes. Approximately two weeks prior to the additions, there was a physical break-in to the finance department that resulted in several laptops without sensitive data being taken.
• Does this change your response to the situation?
• What actions could have been taken immediately after the initial break in?
• What capabilities exist to audit physical security systems?
• Who would/should have been notified immediately of the break in?
• How would you assess the damages associated from the break in?
• Where might you find out which credentials were stored on the stolen computers or what changes were made to the computer in payroll?
• How do you contain the incident?

Review – What is/are the article(s) you found? Explain why they are applicable: author’s credibility, how current is the data, does the article reference any other credible resources, etc.

Summarize/Synthesize – In 1-2 paragraphs, summarize or synthesize the article(s) you found. A summary is one article concisely written to only include the key points, synthesizing is collecting information from multiple articles and combining it to create a single whole piece of information.
Include links to your research and make sure it is obvious what information is coming from which link.

Writing Rules
Be professional in your font and size selection, this is an assignment to hone your skimming and comprehending of relevant data in your field, so I don’t care what it looks like if it is legible.

Minimum Writing – 6-12 paragraphs
• Research topic points – 3-6 paragraphs
• Review Section – 1-2 paragraphs
• Summarize Synthesize – 2-4 paragraphs