New cyber scorecards monitor Maryland’s financial institutions
The Maryland Office of Financial Regulation this week launched SecurityScorecard, a new service to conduct continuous, real-time monitoring of cyber threats to state-regulated banks, credit unions and other financial service companies.
The scorecard will include risk scores by assessing the institutions’ vulnerabilities, which the office will use to track improvements and take action when threats are identified.
“Guarding against cyberthreats is a critical part of safeguarding Maryland’s financial networks,” Maryland Labor Department Secretary Portia Wu said in a press release. “These cybersecurity monitoring services enable the Office of Financial Regulation to deploy modern tools to supervise financial institutions and ensure Marylanders can carry out their financial transactions safely and securely.”
The new service comes as the global financial sector faces increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks, which can disrupt critical services, threaten economic stability and spill over to other institutions. In 2023, a major IT service provider for the credit union industry was targeted by a ransomware attack, resulting in a prolonged service outage that affected 60 credit unions.
Last year, the National Credit Union Administration, the federal agency responsible for insuring deposits and regulating and protecting credit unions, amended rules to its cyber incident reporting policies, requiring credit unions to to report incidents within 72 hours. At the time, it was seeing an increase in cyberattacks against credit unions, credit union service organizations and other financial businesses.
According to a recent report by the International Monetary Fund, cyberattacks against financial institutions have not been “systemic” in 2024, but the probability of severe cyber incidents has increased, “posing an acute threat to macro-financial stability.”
“The Department of Labor’s efforts to protect Maryland’s financial institutions with the latest cybersecurity tools will help keep our constituents and their finances secure,” Maryland Chief Information Officer Katie Savage said in the press release.
