Strengthening Credit Union Security

Strengthening Credit Union Security
The NCUA's Emphasis on Application Allowlisting (whitelisting)

Financial institutions like credit unions face a constant battle to safeguard their members' sensitive data. To ensure the security of these institutions and protect their members, regulatory bodies like the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) play a pivotal role. One of the critical findings in recent NCUA audits is the necessity of implementing application whitelisting as a security measure.

Understanding Application Allowlisting

Application allowlisting is a cybersecurity strategy that allows organizations to specify which software applications and processes are permitted to run on their systems—application allowlisting is a different approach from traditional blocklisting. Sometimes referred to as "blacklisting," blocklisting denies specific applications, while application allowlisting creates a curated list of approved applications that ensures only trusted programs can execute on an endpoint. In its default stage, application allowlisting works by blocking unapproved applications, files, and scripts from running. This granular proactive method reduces the risk of malware and ransomware.

The Role of NCUA in Credit Union Audits

The NCUA (National Credit Union Administration) is the federal agency responsible for regulating and supervising credit unions across the United States. One of its primary objectives is to ensure the safety and soundness of credit unions, protecting the financial well-being of credit union members. To achieve this goal, the NCUA conducts regular audits and examinations of credit unions, assessing financial stability and cybersecurity maturity. 

Recently, the NCUA has recognized the evolving landscape of cybersecurity threats and has intensified its focus on assessing credit unions' cybersecurity posture. They have emphasized critical back-to-basic security controls like application allowlisting during their audits.

Why Application Allowlisting Matters

• Preventing Unauthorized Access: Application allowlisting is an effective defense against unauthorized access to credit union systems. Allowing only approved applications to run significantly reduces the risk of cybercriminals gaining a foothold in the network.
• Mitigating Malware Threats: Malware, such as viruses and ransomware, can wreak havoc on an organization's data and operations. Application allowlisting helps prevent malware from executing on credit union systems, safeguarding critical data.
• Enhanced Compliance: Credit unions that fail to meet NCUA security standards may face penalties and legal repercussions.
• Increased Visibility and Control: Application allowlisting gives credit unions a comprehensive view of files executing on endpoints. This transparency enables better control over software installations and updates, reducing the risk of vulnerabilities.
• Minimized Attack Surface: By limiting the number of authorized files and applications, credit unions can reduce their attack surface, making it more challenging for threat actors to exploit vulnerabilities

Implementing Application Whitelisting.

To smoothly initiate an application allowlisting strategy, credit unions can adopt the following steps:

• Inventory of Applications: Develop a comprehensive inventory of all files executing across all endpoints 
• Define the Allowlist: Evaluate the dataset of files and decide if and how files should be trusted.
• Policy Development: Create policies and procedures for application allowlisting, involving security, IT, and patching teams to ensure ongoing and effective management of the allowlist
• Enforcement: Completing the allowlist process should lead to denying all files that the policy does not implicitly trust.

How Airlock Enhances Credit Union Compliance:

Airlock Digital has assisted numerous credit unions in the US in addressing findings from NCUA audits. Implementing Airlock Digital is swift, typically taking a few weeks with minimal employee effort. Airlock Digital deploys in an audit context – this provides comprehensive visibility into file execution data on endpoints. From there, it allows credit unions to tune policies and make decisions of trust on files permitted to run in the environment.

Conclusion

Credit union breaches have and will continue to occur. However, the emphasis on application allowlisting by the NCUA's audits reveals the importance of allowlisting for credit unions and demonstrates its potential to safeguard credit unions against cyberattacks and data breaches.

This article was written by Jake Smyth.
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