What Vulnerable Hedge Funds can do with Agio Cybersecurity

As confirmed by the U.S government in the course of recent investigations, devious hackers continue to challenge this nation with simple yet effective techniques. In this society, we can no longer afford to ignore the unacceptable costs of criminal hacking attacks. Using an old hacker trick called spear phishing, Russian hackers undermined American democracy by influencing the outcome of the 2016 election. Intelligence services are unanimous in their belief that these high-profile attacks were ordered or abetted by Russian government figures at the highest level. In the course of his investigation into election hacking, special investigator Robert Mueller learned detailed information about how Russian hackers operate. Although Russian hackers are probably the most infamous cyber-criminals active today, there are plenty of other extant criminals opportunistically causing harm to this nation. If attacks like these do not elicit a serious response, criminals around the globe may feel emboldened in their dangerous schemes.

How Phishing Is Affecting Vulnerable Hedge Funds

Spear phishing is such a technically simple intrusion that a bit of proper training can almost completely make any organization invulnerable to this form of attack. According to a variety of high-profile commentators, the ongoing spear phishing epidemic is causing a drag on the national economy. Using a combination of fake emails and fraudulent phone calls, spear phishers trick well-meaning people into revealing sensitive information. As long as people continue making common mistakes like clicking on insecure email links, hackers will continue to compromise of critical systems and data.

In an alarming development, hackers have started routinely spearphishing a number of U.S. financial institutions. Because they handle and transfer large amounts of capital, hedge funds are attractive targets in the eyes of for-profit cyber criminals. Agio offers IT assessments to discover vulnerabilities within individual hedge funds to create real time threat assessments and a contingency plan for attacks. Firms like Agio come out of the massive industry that hackers have created since the creation of the internet. hackers robbed one hedge fund to the tune of over $5 million. The hackers tricked associates of the fund into wiring money to bad actors operating on Chinese soil. If all personnel had followed official directives dealing with sensitive information, no money would have been lost. Agio partners with machine learning to identify advanced phishing techniques that can trick most email users.

It doesn’t cost much for hackers to send personalized phishing emails to hedge funds and other finance-related businesses. Quite a few companies stand in need of specialized training to avoid spear phishing attacks. This training is especially important for employees directly involved in the wire transfer process. When companies lose money to hackers, it is generally impossible to recover stolen funds. Prevention is the best cure when it comes to fighting spear phishing and fraud in general. Because of misleading depictions of hacking in popular media, many laypeople assume that all hacker attacks are executed using sophisticated technical wizardry. Spearfishing proves that any hacker can go quite far with nothing more than a phone call, a fake email and a penchant for dishonesty.

This is an ideal time for people to get into the network security industry. Over the course of the next decade, hedge funds will likely need to hire many, many new employees. It is likely that as hackers and phishing operations become more sophisticated, more private equity firms will have to hire firms like Agio for hedge fund cybersecurity. Because of the politically sensitive nature of the most infamous cyberwarfare attacks, attacks against companies are bound to remain newsworthy long-term. Companies that take commonsense measures to prevent breaches can potentially forestall receiving bad press for suffering avoidable losses.