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Strategic Objective
Improve the cybersecurity of our nation’s financial sector
Strategic Objective
Overview
The financial systems of the United States and the world are in need of greater protection from attacks on their information technology infrastructure. In an age of rapidly advancing technology, Treasury recognizes the need to collaborate with industry to develop protections that can deter attacks on the nation’s critical networks. Working with a combination of international and domestic government, non-government, and private sector partners, Treasury will continue to improve the protection and resilience of financial sector critical infrastructure, including federal financial information and private financial infrastructure, against cyber and physical attacks.
Read Less...Progress Update
Treasury, in consultation with the Office of Management and Budget, identified this objective as making Noteworthy Progress due to the significant progress made in coordinating and engaging with industry and as a Focus Area for Improvement due to ever-evolving threats and complexities in sharing information.
Cyber threats are vast and evolving—not just increasing in number, but also in types of incidents and means for intrusion. The prevalence of cyber risks creates a persistent and complex challenge for financial institutions spanning the sector. The financial costs of cyber-attacks are real and increasing; disruption of business, erosion of customers, loss of revenue, reputational damage and loss of confidence, and theft of intellectual property are just a few ways cyber-attacks hurt the financial system.
As the Sector Specific Agency for Financial Services, defined under Presidential Policy Directive 21, Critical Infrastructure Security and Resilience, Treasury participates in interagency and cross-sector initiatives and plays a key role in managing responses to disruptive events. While Treasury’s sector-specific responsibilities include all hazards, whether natural or man-made, in recent years the Department has increasingly focused on promoting improvements in cybersecurity across the financial sector. In FY 2015, Treasury worked with industry to organize cybersecurity initiatives on a national level using the following themes: baseline protections, information sharing, and response and recovery.
In February 2015, the President signed an executive order encouraging and promoting the sharing of cybersecurity threat information within the private sector and between private and government entities. Treasury assisted DHS in promoting information sharing and analysis and worked this year to automate the information-sharing process.
To enable effective incident response, Treasury established and convened the first-ever meetings of the Financial and Banking Information Infrastructure Committee at the principal level and spearheaded the development of tabletop exercises to test cyber-incident response processes. In FY 2015, Treasury hosted three cyber-related exercises with more than 25 public and private sector organizations.
Protecting Treasury’s infrastructure is critical to maintaining a secure financial infrastructure. Consequently, Treasury fully committed to OMB’s government-wide cyber-sprint and created an internal cyber dashboard to monitor progress and potential threats. As of August 2015, Treasury met OMB’s requirement for strong authentication of users with privileged access and was considered a top-performing federal agency for cybersecurity cross-agency priority goal.
