Paper on Securing Financial Institutions: A Comprehensive Guide to Cybersecurity Strategies and Regulatory Compliance

Organizations today have a wide range of cybersecurity frameworks that they can adopt to protect themselves against the risk of cyber threats. Padgett-Beale Financial Services being a relatively big organization requires a comprehensive cyber management program that not only protects the organization from the current cyber threats but is also able to adapt to the ever-changing nature of cyber threats. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) framework is one of the most appropriate cybersecurity frameworks that the organization can use effectively. The NIST framework provides superior cybersecurity that is comprehensive, unbiased, and in-depth, making it suitable for any organization. The framework is highly flexible and easily customizable depending on the organization's needs, complements the current regulatory authorities, and offers long-term cybersecurity and risk management, ideal for the organization (Shen, 2014).

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The cybersecurity management program in a financial service firm must address several laws and regulations from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA). FINRA requires that all cyber management programs submit written procedures and policies regarding how the firm protects its customers' personal information against cyber threats. Cyber management programs must also conform to FINRA's guidelines and rules that outline how to detect and mitigate cyber risks that can potentially compromise the consumers' identity. In some states such as New York, cyber management programs must conform to the laws and regulations as stipulated by the 23 NYCRR 500 cybersecurity regulations, which requires that financial institutions should have a thorough cybersecurity plan and should disclose incidents of cyber-attacks within 72 hours (Teodoro et al., 2015).

To assess the maturity of PBI-F's cybersecurity management program, the following best practices should be put in place.

1. The first practice that should be put in place is to identify the business environment, the cybersecurity policies, risk management strategies, and cybersecurity policies for the organization to prioritize and focus on their needs.
2. The second best practice is to protect and safeguard the delivery of services through empowering staff with cybersecurity training and implementing cybersecurity processes and procedures within the organization, among other practices.
3. The third best practice is for the organization to detect cybersecurity threats and actions on time through mainlining detection processes that can timely detect any abnormal activities.
4. The fourth best practice is to take actions and respond to the detected cybersecurity actions by ensuring that processes relating to response planning are implemented adequately during and after the incidents.
5. The fifth best practice is to recover and restore services that had been halted due to the cybersecurity activity or threat.

References

Shen, L. (2014). The NIST cybersecurity framework: Overview and potential impacts. SciTech Lawyer, 10(4), 16. http://search.proquest.com/openview/3d3347a7425bf7766977ec48e757e8d3/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=38541

Teodoro, N., Gonçalves, L., & Serrão, C. (2015). NIST CyberSecurity Framework Compliance: A Generic Model for Dynamic Assessment and Predictive Requirements. In 2015 IEEE Trustcom/BigDataSE/ISPA (Vol. 1, pp. 418-425). IEEE. https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/7345310/