Is the SEC Failing Investors on Cyber-Security Risk?

Hackers hack weakness. They are efficient at finding it and work relentlessly to exploit it. Now, new moves by the SEC are raising questions about whether the regulator is taking the right steps to protect America’s capital markets and investors.

Warren Buffett recently declared at the 2018 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting that cyber risk “is uncharted territory. It’s going to get worse, not better.”

The SEC recently released an investigative report on “spoofing.” Under this common electronic communications fraud, a hacker sends a fraudulent e-mail seemingly from a company executive or vendor asking for funds to be sent to a bank account, which is actually under the hacker’s control. The FBI has identified this type of fraud as having the highest out-of-pocket costs for any class of cyber crime, an amount reaching almost $6 billion since 2013.