Treasury agency’s biggest focus in 2018 will be cybersecurity

The Treasury Department’s Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s top priority for 2018 will be cybersecurity.

CyberScoop’s Patrick Howell O’Neill reports that the office set the focus in its newly released bank supervision operating plan for 2018. It comes amid an environment where attackers are multiplying and the threat surface is rapidly expanding, and experts expect the reaction from banks to be greater focus and spending on cybersecurity.

“Cyber threats are increasing in speed and sophistication,” Comptroller of the Currency Keith Noreika said earlier this year in an OCC Risk Perspective. “These threats target large quantities of personally identifiable information and proprietary intellectual property and facilitate misappropriation of funds at the retail and wholesale level. Phishing is a primary method for breaching data systems and is often the entry mechanism to perpetrate other malicious activity, such as installing ransomware, accessing confidential information, compromising internal systems to effect payments, or conducting espionage.”

Read more on the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s new plan on CyberScoop.