Microsoft starts pilot project with FS-ISAC

The project is to tackle financially-motivated cybercrime attacks, which are estimated to cost USD 100 billion a year in the US alone.

Under the free pilot, banks and financial institutions that are members of FS-ISAC will be able to use Microsoft’s Cyber Threat Intelligence Program feed to cross-match their own networks against a feed of 67 million unique IP domains. The idea is to help banks and other institutions to see which computers on their network are infected. In return, FS-ISAC will provide Microsoft with its cyber threat information from itself and its members.

In 2013, 552 million identities were breached, while every call about a compromised credit card costs a bank USD 4. Incidents of fraud, typically involving stolen bank account details, are thought to be on the rise. A PWC survey in the US shows that 75% of businesses surveyed had detected a security breach in 2013, while the average number of security intrusions was 135 per organisation. A separate study by security company Trustwave reveals that 96% of applications have one or more serious security vulnerabilities.

FS-ISAC, or the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, is the global financial industrys go-to resource for cyber and physical threat intelligence analysis and sharing.