In other FinTech news, TrapX Security debuts cybersecurity protections for SWIFT networks and Wall Street Horizon is offering five data types via Virtua Research.
Second SEC Panel Focuses on Clearing and Settlement
SEC officials and industry participants will explore distributed ledger technology (DLT) and other IT innovations impacting trading, settlement and clearing via a panel session during the regulator’s Fintech Forum, slated for Nov. 14, at the SEC’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.
The forum, which is open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis, will be divided into four panels, SEC officials say. The first panel will focus on the impact of recent innovation in investment advisory services.
The second panel, at10:45 a.m., will spotlight how innovation will affect trading, settlement, and clearance activities, officials say.
The discussion will feature Valerie Szczepanik, head of the SEC Distributed Ledger Technology Working Group, who will serve as a moderator. Some of the key panelists are: Brad Peterson, executive vice president and chief information officer/chief technology officer at Nasdaq; former SWIFT executive Chris Church, who is now chief business development officer at DLT pioneer Digital Asset Holdings; and former CFTC Commissioner Mark Wetjen, head of global public policy at DTCC.
The third panel will highly the impact of innovation on capital formation and the fourth session will be about investor protection in “the Fintech Era,” according to the SEC.
For those unable to attend, the SEC will provide a live webcast via the SEC’s Fintech Spotlight page, officials say. The webcast will also be archived for later viewing. The public can follow the SEC via Twitter at @SEC_News and live-tweet the Fintech Forum using the hashtag #SECfintech. The complete agenda is at: http://bit.ly/2fA4oFT .
Cybersecurity Vendor Uses Deception to Protect SWIFT Networks
TrapX Security, a deception-based cybersecurity vendor, has released a solution designed to protect SWIFT financial networks that includes Traps (decoys) and Tokens (lures) to capture cyber attackers, vendor officials say.
The new capabilities will “imitate a variety of real SWIFT financial network computer terminals and web services,” the vendor says.
TrapX officials say that its DeceptionGrid now offers emulation capabilities for SWIFT Alliance SAG, SWIFT Alliance SAA and SWIFT Alliance Web Platforms for Linux and Microsoft Windows deployments and was designed to help financial institutions target and stop SWIFT financial network attackers.
“In the past year, SWIFT has been under attack by persistent cyber attackers, which have resulted in the theft of more than $100 million dollars from banks worldwide,” says Greg Enriquez, CEO of TrapX Security, in a statement. “These attacks demonstrate a broad knowledge of bank operations as attackers combine them with sophisticated tools and techniques to penetrate target bank networks.”
The SWIFT network is a closed system but cyber-attackers are able “to penetrate a targeted financial network, can establish a ‘backdoor’ and observe and map network assets without being detected for long periods of time,” according to TrapX Security. “Enough time in the network allows attackers to learn operating procedures for major financial applications and then compromise the targeted systems. Attackers then access and capture authentication traffic and, ultimately, escalate their permissions, often to the administrator level to compromise the SWIFT financial network transactions in a variety of potential ways.”
The TrapX DeceptionGrid “surrounds the actual SWIFT assets with a blanket of protective Traps and Tokens that leads attackers to attractive fake SWIFT decoys, which look relatively undefended,” the vendor continues. “However, each Trap has the ability to capture, contain and analyze attackers, while alerting the financial institutions security operations center (SOC) teams. Once the attacker is identified within the network, an in-depth report of the attack method is shared with SOC for assessment and remediation. This provides financial institutions with exceptional visibility situational awareness of activity within the internal networks.”
DeceptionGrid with SWIFT protection technology is available today and is free for existing TrapX customers, officials say.
Wall Street Horizon Offers Five Data Types via Virtua Platform
Corporate event dates and information vendor Wall Street Horizon is providing a web-enabled information delivery vendor, Virtua Research, with five of its forward-looking and historical event data types via its Enchilada online application — corporate earnings dates, earnings reports, earnings announcements, earnings revisions and earnings conference calls, officials say.
Wall Street Horizon, which targets institutional traders and investors, reports that the its earnings-related corporate event data on the Virtua platform will target corporate “C-suite” and investor relations (IR) professionals, vendor officials say. In addition, Virtua subscribers will have the opportunity to purchase the full Enchilada premium service with all 40+ corporate event types.
The combined effort will enable chief financial officers (CFOs) and financial analysts to perform “a wide range of IR tasks from peer analysis to consensus analysis using the comprehensive Virtua platform by accessing Enchilada event data in combination with the Virtua analytics and additional research tools,” according to Wall Street Horizon officials.
By partnering with Virtua, Wall Street Horizons can extend its reach into the corporate and IR space, says Bruce Fador, president of Wall Street Horizon, in a statement. “We are excited for Virtua to be the first IR-focused platform to feature Enchilada and believe by using our corporate event data, it will help firms better manage their competitive analysis,” Fador says.
“Anyone charged with financial planning needs earnings-focused event data to complement their research,” says Andy Detwiler, CEO of Virtua Research, in a statement.
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