Did Malware Take the Banks Down?
The nation's three largest banks and a handful of others were derailed over the weekend when their ATM and online banking channels were taken down. All of the institutions affected -- Bank of America, Chase, U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, Compass, USAA, SunTrust, Chase, Fairwinds Credit Union, American Express, BB&T on the East Coast and PNC -- are blaming the outage on a computer glitch related to the time-zone change.
But Julie McNelley, a senior analyst at Aite Group LLC who covers banking and payments fraud, says there is likely a great deal more going on behind the scenes. In fact, she suspects the weekend outage is related to a widespread malware attack. "It has all the hallmarks of that, based on the geographic spread of it, the targeted systems and the banks in question," she says.
During this interview with Information Security Media Group, McNelley discusses:
- The role outsourcing to third-party vendors may have played in the outage;
- The suspicious outage link between the ATM and online channels; and
- Why outdated backend systems and infrastructures are not likely to blame.
McNelley has more than a decade of hands-on product management experience working with financial institutions, payments processors and risk management companies. She most recently served as senior vice president of product management with Golden Gateway Financial, where she developed and managed new financial services lines of business. Before joining Golden Gateway, she was vice president of product solutions with Early Warning Services, where she managed a suite of fraud prevention services. Under McNelley's leadership, Early Warning launched multiple new solutions to successfully detect and prevent fraud; further, she was a key member of the team that facilitated the spin-off of Early Warning Services from First Data Corp. to Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, and BB&T. She also led operational process improvements for NextCard, identifying points of compromise and implementing solutions to reduce fraud and operational expenses. She began her career as a research analyst at E*Offering, where she analyzed online financial services and risk-management firms.
McNelley holds a master's degree in international policy from the Monterey Institute of International Studies and a bachelor's degree in business administration from Michigan State University.
Nov. 10, 2010
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