Nordic Banks Joint Forces on Fighting Cybercrime

  • Security
  • 10.04.2017 11:30 am

Nordic banks are accelerating the collaboration to fight cybercrime, which is a growing problem in the Nordics and the rest of the world.

Banks and their customers are vulnerable to the threats of theft, hacking, fraud and other cybercrimes. A new collaboration forum, the Nordic Financial CERT, which is based on the existing Norwegian platform, FinansCERT, is taking a new approach. Danske Bank, Nordea, DNB, Sparebank 1 and Eika Group, among other Nordic banks, will share relevant data to combat cybercrime, which has become more innovative, aggressive and organised in recent years.

The Nordic Financial CERT aims at fortifying the Nordic community in the face of cyber risks to customer assets and at providing a safety net for all financial institutions, big and small. It envisions a Nordic community in which the financial sector actionably and in an agile way identifies, defends against and combats cyber risks.

“The Nordic Financial CERT marks a great step towards making IT security in the Nordic financial sector even stronger. Sharing data is allowing the financial industry to work into a collaborative manner. Protecting the community and our customers is the key component,” says Jim Ditmore, COO at Danske Bank.

The collaboration began four years ago in Norway under the FinansCERT name. FinansCERT was a great success, and is now expanding into becoming the Nordic Financial CERT, a wider collaboration forum that covers the entire Nordic region.

“We are looking forward to continue the important work carried out by FinansCert in the Nordic arena,” says Idar Kreutzer, CEO at Finance Norway.

The collaboration will enable the banks to gather the best knowledge available about fighting cybercrime in the Nordic financial sector, and it will have a number of synergy effects that will improve both the customers’ and the banks’ security.

“Our customers are the reason why we exist, and we consider it our social responsibility to strengthen the collaboration with other Nordic financial institutions to become more effective in the creation of a safe and protected environment,” said Torsten Hagen Jørgensen, COO of Nordea.

As FinansCERT is already in operation, its transformation into a Nordic collaboration will bring additional participants from the financial sector. The Nordic Financial CERT invites the entire financial industry to join. Further, the collaboration will work to enable proactive measures across the industry and with the community in general.  

The objective is to expand even further in the next couple of years – not only by adding members but also by extending the cooperation. All for the purpose of protecting Nordic customers and the Nordic community.

 

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