Network security company FireEye made headlines last week when it announced it had partnered with Visa to create new products that would make it easier for companies to find and fix potential data breaches.
The company, which has been around since 2004, has received accolades for its approach to cyber threats. FireEye made Business Insider’s 2013 list of 15 most important security startups, which highlighted FireEye founder Ashar Aziz’s innovative technology. One of its patented methods stops hackers from infiltrating unfixed software “holes” and protects companies from personalized network attacks, according to Business Insider reporter Julie Bort.
“FireEye finds this stuff by flagging suspicious stuff and then opening it in a safe, virtual environment,” Bort wrote. “For instance, its email appliance opens the suspected email attachment to see what it does. The whole process takes a fraction of a second and if the email contains malware, it stops it.”
This is not FireEye’s first collaboration. In May, the cybersecurity wizards teamed up with insurance juggernaut ACE Group in an effort to better inform companies of their cyber risks and what their insurance options are should their data be compromised. The new partnership between FireEye and Visa, however, is the first time FireEye has worked directly with a company to anticipate and quickly fix areas that potential hackers could penetrate.
While FireEye has not gained the same amount of name recognition as its competitors like McAfee and Cisco, its valuable contributions to cybersecurity make it a high-powered teammate in the new Visa partnership, according to FireEye CEO David DeWalt.
“The threat environment for merchants is more hostile than we’ve ever seen — attack groups focused exclusively on stealing consumer data are continuously expanding their operations and employing new techniques. It’s a daunting prospect for any merchant whose business could collapse if they lose customer trust,” DeWalt said in a statement. “This new collaboration brings together two industry leaders to help protect merchants and payment data and minimize the impact of attacks by sharing information.”
Arguably the most well-known financial services corporation in the world, Visa’s credit and debit cards are regularly used in financial transactions everywhere. By virtue of their popularity, however, they are also at high risk for being hacked or misused by thieves. The goal behind the Visa/FireEye collaboration is to quickly track down new cyber threats before they balloon out of control and result in steep losses, according to a statement from FireEye.
The importance of companies (and especially banks) being able to quickly detect and fix security breaches is emphasized in the 2014 report on cybersecurity in the banking sector released by the New York State Department of Public Services.
“Although financial institutions have taken significant steps to bolster cyber security efforts in recent years, banks and other financial services companies will continue to be challenged by the speed of technological change and the increasing sophisticated nature of threats,” the report read. “While institutions are aware that the threat landscape is constantly evolving, they may find it difficult to keep up with the latest developments amid competitive pressure to integrate new technologies into their product offerings (e.g., remote deposit capture).”
Essentially, as the demand for quicker, more efficient financial technology grows, so does the need for quicker, more efficient methods of tracking down cyber thieves. An example highlighted in the report is remote deposit capture, a technology developed in the early 2000s that allows account holders to deposit money into their bank accounts by submitting an image of a check rather than a physical one. As the use of smartphones has become widespread, the practice of remote deposit capture has shifted from submitting checks via computers to instead submitting them via smartphone pictures.
While this revolutionary technology makes deposits easier and faster than ever before, it also opens up a new world of cyber vulnerabilities. One of the most common fears is that users will maliciously deposit a check remotely more than once, as in the 2013 case of a Louisville, Ky., man who stole more than $12,000 from multiple Kroger stores using this method.
It is too early in the game to determine if the Visa and FireEye partnership will actually be successful in cutting down on financial cybercrime, but Visa Inc. CEO Charlie Scharf is hopeful for the future.
“By combining Visa’s unparalleled view into global payments and FireEye’s industry-leading cybersecurity expertise, we intend to bring faster, actionable intelligence directly to players across the payments system,” Scharf said in a statement. “Although we are leading efforts to render stolen data useless through smart technologies, data security remains foundational for merchants. We’re pleased to be working closely with FireEye, which has been at the front lines identifying and investigating some of the most significant compromises around the world, to provide critical cyber intelligence to merchants and financial institutions.”
