Cyber threats against financial institutions have increased significantly due to several converging factors

Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs): These are highly targeted and prolonged cyberattacks, often state-sponsored, aimed at stealing sensitive data or disrupting operations.  

AI and Machine Learning Exploitation: Cybercriminals are increasingly leveraging AI to create more convincing deepfakes for social engineering, automate phishing attacks, and develop malware that can evade traditional detection methods.  

Ransomware Evolution: Ransomware attacks are becoming more targeted, focusing on high-profile institutions for larger payouts. "Double extortion" tactics, involving data exfiltration before encryption, are also on the rise. Ransomware-as-a-Service (RaaS) lowers the barrier for less sophisticated actors to launch attacks.

GuardTower is a multi-layer deception, detection, and deterrence cybersecurity system with an AI-based architecture platform. GuardTower is designed to be part of your network to attract and capture attackers after the breach point but before the impact of the activity, providing valuable insights into their tactics and techniques, thereby stopping nefarious activities before they begin. GuardTower also goes beyond being a ghost in your network to leveraging distraction, deterrence, and countermeasures to keep attackers from critical systems, gathering intelligence, and even disrupting hacker operations. GuardTower includes a range of active tools, including AI Decoys, AI Strikepoint, and AI Strikeforce, making it a versatile tool for security teams.

As an all-in-one intelligence platform, GuardTower significantly bolsters the security posture of financial, banking, and insurance markets by providing valuable insights into cyber threats and attacker behavior. Here's how it helps:

Enhanced Threat Intelligence:

• Understanding Attack Vectors: GuardTower captures and analyzes attacks in real-time, revealing the methods, tools, and infrastructure used by cybercriminals targeting financial institutions. This includes identifying common entry points like vulnerable services (SSH, Telnet), web applications, and IoT devices.

• Identifying Attack Trends: By logging and monitoring malicious activities, GuardTower helps identify emerging attack trends, prevalent malware, and the tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) employed by threat actors specifically targeting the financial sector. For example, it can reveal a surge in brute-force attacks on specific services or a rise in phishing attempts using compromised mail servers.

• Attribution and Profiling: Analyzing the source IPs and behaviors of attackers can provide clues about their origin, motivations (e.g., financial gain, disruption), and skill levels. This intelligence is crucial for building accurate threat profiles and anticipating future attacks.

Early Threat Detection and Warning:

• Detecting Novel Attacks: Because AI Decoys within the GuardTower framework mimic real systems but don't contain actual sensitive data, any interaction is highly likely to be malicious. This allows for not just the early detection of new or sophisticated attacks that might bypass traditional security measures, but also the automatic deployment of Strikeforce and Strongpoint.

• Real-time Alerts: GuardTower’s Strongpoint matches attack surfaces to the MITRE ATT&CK and NIST frameworks and allows Strikeforce to activate alerts to the security teams.  These preventative measures are integrated with alert email tools to generate real-time alerts when suspicious activity is detected.

Improved Incident Response:

• Understanding Attack Progression: By observing how attackers interact with the AI Decoy environment, security teams can gain a better understanding of their objectives and how they might attempt to move laterally within a real network. This knowledge aids in developing more effective incident response strategies.

• Collecting Forensic Data: GuardTower logs detailed information about attacks, including the tools used, commands executed, and payloads deployed. This forensic data is invaluable for post-incident analysis, understanding the scope of a potential breach, and improving security defenses.

Diversion and Deception:

• Diverting Attackers: Strategically placed AI Decoys can act as decoys, attracting attackers away from critical systems and buying time for security teams to detect, analyze, and respond to the intrusion.

• Gaining Insight Without Risk: GuardTower allows security professionals to study attacker behavior in a controlled environment without exposing real customer data or critical financial infrastructure to harm.

Strengthening Defenses:

• Identifying Vulnerabilities: The attacks captured by GuardTower can highlight weaknesses in existing security controls and reveal vulnerable services or applications that need patching or hardening.

• Testing Security Tools and Strategies: GuardTower can be used to test the effectiveness of existing security tools and strategies by simulating various attack scenarios and observing how they are detected and mitigated.

Specific Benefits for Financial, Banking, and Insurance Markets:

• Protection of Sensitive Data: These sectors handle vast amounts of highly sensitive financial and personal data, making them prime targets for cybercriminals. GuardTower helps in understanding how attackers might try to access this data and allows for the implementation of stronger protective measures.

• Maintaining Regulatory Compliance: Financial institutions are subject to stringent regulations regarding data protection and cybersecurity. The threat intelligence gained from GuardTower can help these organizations better understand the threat landscape and implement appropriate security controls to meet compliance requirements.

• Building Customer Trust: Cybersecurity incidents can severely damage customer trust and reputation in the financial sector. By proactively using tools like GuardTower to understand and defend against threats, these institutions can demonstrate their commitment to security and maintain customer confidence.

• Combating Financial Fraud: GuardTower can help in understanding the techniques used in financial fraud, such as unauthorized transfers and account takeovers, allowing for the development of more effective fraud prevention measures.

In essence, GuardTower cybersecurity acts as an early warning system and a valuable intelligence-gathering tool, empowering financial, banking, and insurance markets to proactively defend against the ever-evolving landscape of cyber threats, protect sensitive information, and maintain the trust of their customers.