Cyber Dawn: Wall Street Opens Up About Cyber Security

Come October I will have been at Waters for six years. The first five of those years were fairly devoid of any substantial talk around cyber security, at least in a public setting. That's not to say that capital markets firms weren't worried about these attacks and weren't actively working to bolster their defenses, they just didn't want to talk too openly about the subject.

My guess for the reasoning behind this is that they didn't want to taunt a bull, with the bull, in this case, being hacker groups like Anonymous. The Occupy Wall Street movement four years ago led to a swath of high-profile denial-of-service (DoS) attacks at some major retail banks. I think that people at trading houses started to realize that they're all in this together. If that's the case, why not talk about it and exchange notes?

During our Waters USA conference in December, everyone on the C-level panel wanted to talk about cyber security. That was definitely a first, and I've been moderating C-level panels for several years. Then, in March, Waters' sibling publication held its first Cyber Risk conference, which was heavily attended. A month later, Waters dedicated an entire issue to cyber security, with five features looking at varying parts of the cyber-security puzzle.

Then, earlier this week, Waters hosted the inaugural Cyber Security and Risk Management Briefing in midtown Manhattan. Again, it was very well attended with security professionals from some of the largest banks and asset managers in the world on down to small hedge funds and boutique brokerages were there.

My colleagues Dan DeFrancesco and Tim Murray wrote about two panels from the event, with Dan looking at the keynote address by Omkhar Arasaratnam, and Tim covering FBI special agent Richard Jacobs' presentation on the need for collaboration between trading firms and government entities. Next week I'll be publishing a feature looking at how eight end users view cyber security in today's day and age.

This is a subject that is not going away. We have several conferences coming up ─ including next week's Chicago Trading and Technology Summit ─ and rest assured that cyber will be in the discussion.

The key for us, as a media outlet, will be to make sure that we're covering what you are most concerned about. Cyber attacks are evolving all the time; so too should our coverage. So if you see me at an event, take me aside and let me know where you think we should focus our attention. Or, send me an email or give me a call at 646-490-3973.