More Banks Face Cyber Attacks: Time to Review Safety?

It seems that hackers were preying upon the systems of the U.S. financial institutions for quite some time now. Slowly emergent information reveals that JPMorgan Chase & Co. JPM was not the only firm to be victimized by a cyber attack. (Read More: JPMorgan Data Breach Affects 76M Households; Probe On).

There were at least a dozen more firms whose cyber security system was attacked by the same hackers. These include Citigroup Inc. C, E*TRADE Financial Corp. ETFC, HSBC Holdings plc (HSBC), Regions Financial Corp. RF, Fidelity Investments, Bank of the West – a subsidiary of BNP Paribas SA (BNPQY) and Automatic Data Processing, Inc. ADP.

Nonetheless, as per these firms, hackers were not able to penetrate deep into their systems and no data was breached.

After JPMorgan reported cyber attack, regulators probing the incident asked other large banks and financial institutions, including Citigroup, Regions Financial, Deutsche Bank AG DB, Bank of America Corp. BAC and E*TRADE Financial, to check for signs that imply hacking.

Some of the firms – Citigroup, Regions Financial, E*TRADE Financial and ADP – confirmed that their servers had seen traffic from the same Internet protocol IP addresses that hackers had used to breach JPMorgan's system. On the other hand, some banks including Deutsche Bank and BofA did not confirm any indications of hackers trying to invade their systems.

Despite no other firm reporting any data breach til now, several law enforcement agencies including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Agency, Department of Homeland Security, U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan and New York's Department of Financial Services are examining the matter. The situation is being monitored by the White House officials as well.

There is also a debate going on to decipher the motive behind the cyber attacks. Speculations suggest that the cyber onslaught might be in retaliation against recent sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine crisis.

Moreover, the sophistication level and other technical details of the cyber attack point toward some government link. Investigations are still on and hackers from Russia or other Eastern European countries are also being considered as possible suspects.

With the U.S. banks hit by a deluge of cyber assaults, the need to invest in cyber security is also gaining strength. The situation demands that the banks be extremely careful and develop a system that is cyber-attack proof.