Fintech cyber security consortium initiative led by World Economic Forum

The financial services sector is among the most vulnerable to cybercrime because of the vast amount of money and valuable data that banks and investment companies process each day. Citigroup, online lender Kabbage, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation, Zurich Insurance Group, and Hewlett Packard, are some of the consortium’s founding members first announced.

The new consortium, which will be managed by the WEF and work with the organization’s new Geneva-based Global Center of Cybersecurity, will develop a point-based scoring system for fintech companies. The group will create a framework to assess the security level of fintech companies and data aggregators, whose preparedness against hacks is seen as increasingly important to the stability of the wider financial industry, according to Reuters.

The need for better cybersecurity assessment mechanisms was identified in a WEF report published on March 6, as one of the solutions to the security challenges posed by the increased use of digital services in finance. The report noted that the use of technology innovations such as robotics and biometrics was expanding the amount of customer data at risk.