Virtual Event: Threat Detection and Incident Response Summit - Watch Sessions
Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cyber Insurance

U.S Banks Required to Report Cyberattacks to Regulators Within 36 Hours

In less than half a year, banks in the United States will be required to notify federal regulators of serious cybersecurity incidents within 36 hours.

In less than half a year, banks in the United States will be required to notify federal regulators of serious cybersecurity incidents within 36 hours.

The final version of this cybersecurity incident notification rule was announced on Thursday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Reserve, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).

The rule applies to banking organizations and their service providers, and it will take effect on April 1, 2022, with full compliance extended to May 1, 2022.

“FDIC-supervised banking organizations will be required to notify the FDIC as soon as possible and no later than 36 hours after the banking organization determines that a computer-security incident that rises to the level of a notification incident has occurred,” the agencies said. “The banking organization must provide this notification to the appropriate FDIC supervisory office, or an FDIC-designated point of contact, through email, telephone, or other similar methods that the FDIC may prescribe.”

“Security incidents” are incidents that result in actual harm to the confidentiality, integrity or availability of information systems. “Notification incidents” are incidents that cause serious disruption to operations, ones that prevent the bank from delivering its products and services, or ones that pose a risk to the stability of the financial sector. Examples provided by the agencies include computer failures, DDoS attacks or ransomware attacks.

Bank service providers will be required to report incidents to client banks in case banking services are — or are likely to be — disrupted for more than four hours.

The agencies noted that they want to avoid putting a burden on banks — organizations are only required to inform regulators about an incident, without also needing to provide a full assessment or analysis within the 36 hours.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

“This new regulation is a reflection of the growing breadth of impact cyber attacks have on financial services,” commented James Hadley, founder and CEO of Immersive Labs. “Technology is no longer just a part of the industry, but the operating system on which the entire sector runs. Attacks now mean more than short term reputational and financial loss for a single institution, having the potential to spread through interconnected infrastructure with significant impact on people and business.”

“Such regulation will encourage the sharing of critical knowledge at a pace that will allow senior stakeholders inside interlinked organizations to respond more effectively. This kind of swift and collaborative response, coupled with regular exercising, will improve decision making and improve resilience across the board,” Hadley added.

Related: US Poised to Go After Contractors Who Don’t Report Breaches

Related: US Gov Executive Order to Mandate Data Breach Disclosure

Related: Deep Analysis of More than 60,000 Breach Reports Over Three Years

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

SecurityWeek’s Threat Detection and Incident Response Summit brings together security practitioners from around the world to share war stories on breaches, APT attacks and threat intelligence.

Register

Securityweek’s CISO Forum will address issues and challenges that are top of mind for today’s security leaders and what the future looks like as chief defenders of the enterprise.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Application Security

Cycode, a startup that provides solutions for protecting software source code, emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday with $4.6 million in seed funding.

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Management & Strategy

SecurityWeek examines how a layoff-induced influx of experienced professionals into the job seeker market is affecting or might affect, the skills gap and recruitment...

CISO Strategy

SecurityWeek spoke with more than 300 cybersecurity experts to see what is bubbling beneath the surface, and examine how those evolving threats will present...

Data Breaches

LastPass DevOp engineer's home computer hacked and implanted with keylogging malware as part of a sustained cyberattack that exfiltrated corporate data from the cloud...

CISO Conversations

In this issue of CISO Conversations we talk to two CISOs about solving the CISO/CIO conflict by combining the roles under one person.

CISO Strategy

Security professionals understand the need for resilience in their company’s security posture, but often fail to build their own psychological resilience to stress.

Application Security

GitHub this week announced the revocation of three certificates used for the GitHub Desktop and Atom applications.