Industry News: ESG5

The target: Philips Capital Inc, a Chicago-based brokerage firm.

The take: $1 million USD from a client account.

The attack vector: Attackers gained access to internal systems via a successful phishing attempt and impersonated a client of the firm using information they’d gained from reviewing past e-mail correspondences. Gaps in disbursement procedures allowed a requested wire transfer to an unknown bank account to be approved and processed.

While technical controls can protect against cyber-attacks, they cannot always compensate for gaps in procedure and a failure to think critically.

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