'Mafias and governments are attacking our networks,' says investment firm

'The bad guys only have to succeed once, security has to succeed 100 per cent of the time,' Miguel Segimon, information security manager tells Computing

The biggest cyber security threats to global asset management firm Pioneer Investments are ‘heavily organised players' including well-drilled cyber criminal operations and rogue nation stations, Miguel Segimon, the firm's information security manager, has told Computing.

Founded in 1928, Pioneer Investments is a financial services company with 2,000 employees across 31 offices in 27 countries and as of June 2014 was responsible for €185.5bn in assets under management.

As a major financial institution, Pioneer Investments makes an attractive target for hackers and other cyber criminals and it is Segimon's role to manage day-to-day security against some very powerful opponents.

"We do have the ongoing attacks in the advanced persistent threat (APT) sector from the heavily organised players. Whether it's mafias or some of the governments out there that are attacking networks for various reasons, we do have to prevent against those," he said.

"Given we're in financial services, it's really ultimately about money. We do try to defend against all the potential factors that could be coming after us, whether they're coming against a single PC or they're coming against the entire network," he said. "You have to defend all your endpoints because that's how they get in in the first place."

Segimon stressed the importance of maintaining total security by arguing that an organisation only needs to slip up once to become the victim of a serious case of data theft.

"The bad guys only have to succeed once, whereas security has to succeed 100 per cent of the time. That's why try to rely on some of these best-of-breed products and best-of-breed service," he said, referring to the ForeScout and Bromium tools that Pioneer Investments uses to protect against cyber security threats.

"We can incorporate a lot of these advanced intelligence features and it gives us good information about what's on our network," he said.

Pioneer Investments certainly isn't the only organisation that has to fend off cyber intrusions from nation states. Speaking last year, McLaren CIO Stuart Birrell said the Formula 1 team and technology company has definitely been targeted by cyber attackers working for governments.

"Because of our IP [intellectual property] and profile, we're an attack target. Four weeks ago there was firewall probing by a nation state of eastern origin. We know, because our defences can see that happen, because they're working in the background," he said.

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