Cyber Attack Simulation Planned Next Month

A financial services industry group is planning to simulate a series of cyber attacks to test how well banks, payment processors and retailers deal with online threats.

The Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center (FS-ISAC), a group formed in response to a 1998 Presidential security directive, on Tuesday invited financial institutions, retailers, card processors, and businesses of all sizes to participate in its Cyber Attack against Payment Processes (CAPP) Exercise.

"FS-ISAC in conjunction with a variety of industry partners is testing their members' emergency response, notification, and communication procedures in response to a number of different types of cyber attacks against payment processes," the group's Web site says. "The three-day exercise will simulate a different attack scenario each day. Detailed result collection is kept confidential."

The CAPP event is scheduled for February 9 through 11, 2010. Participants will be expected to activate their incident response procedures in accordance with the scenario presented and to complete an anonymous survey to evaluate their organization's response.

"When cyber security threats occur, swift and well-planned reactions can mean the difference between business continuity and business catastrophe," said Bill Nelson, FS-ISAC's president and CEO in a statement. "This is especially true with cyber attacks against payment processes. FS-ISAC is eager to provide payment systems participants with this unique opportunity to test their readiness to respond to major cyber attack incidents."

The incidence of such incidents has been rising.

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) said in November that the FBI had seen a significant increase in online banking fraud.

On Tuesday, in its 2009 Annual Malware Report, Panda Labs said that it had seen 25 million new malware variants created during the year, 166% more than the 15 million variants recorded by the company over the rest of its 20-year history.

Most of the new malware samples detected by the company (66%) were online banking trojans.