5 Things You Don’t Know Because You Weren’t At CU InfoSecurity 2013

by. Robert McGarvey

Around 50 credit union IT executives filled the meeting room at the Platinum Hotel in Las Vegas and, over three days last week, they heard from speaker after speaker with new warnings, fresh approaches to helping employees dodge phishing attacks, and above all, better ways to protect the data that are the lifeblood of any financial institution.

Face it: the era of the crook with a mask and a gun robbing a financial institution is fast disappearing. Value today is in data and it’s the data that are under relentless assault by ever smarter crooks.

Credit unions in attendance at the conference were large – the $1.2 billion MECU of Baltimore – and others were small – the $108 million GeoVista CU in Hinesville, Ga. – and still others were mid-sized such as the $448 million Air Academy FCU from Colorado Springs, Colo.

They came because, as one executive explained, “we want to hear what’s new, what we should be recommending to our CEO and the board.”

Bottom line: information security is a dynamically changing landscape and that, fundamentally, is what brought the IT executives to the conference.

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