BNM: FinTIP expected to strengthen response capabilities to cyber threats

KUALA LUMPUR – The Financial Sector Cyber Threat Intelligence Platform (FinTIP) is expected to support deeper and faster information sharing and collaboration, which in turn will strengthen the financial industry’s response capabilities to the evolving cyber threats affecting the financial system.

“FinTIP, which operates on a 24x7x365 basis, will collect, aggregate and analyse cyber threat intelligence and Information Technology (IT) vulnerabilities from various sources, and distribute relevant information to stakeholders in a timely manner,” Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM) said in its Financial Stability Report for the first half of 2021.

FinTIP, which is overseen by BNM, commenced operations in September 2021.

It serves to complement and augment, rather than replace, an individual institution’s own existing cyber threat intelligence services.

This analytical platform leverages a combination of machine algorithms and human experts to correlate, normalise, enrich, and sanitise collected data to produce real-time actionable intelligence.

Financial institutions can use the information provided by FinTIP for their own incident response, security operations, threat hunting, vulnerability management, and risk analysis.

They can also access professional services for assistance on cyber incident remediation and analysis of threats, it said.

Besides performing rapid assessment and dissemination of information on emerging cyber threats and critical IT vulnerabilities, it also fosters information sharing and collaboration across the industry via a secured and trusted platform as well as increases cyber situational awareness to aid strategic decision-making.

The operation of FinTIP by the Bank helps to build trust, thereby reducing a key barrier to widespread information sharing and collaboration between financial institutions and other key stakeholders, it said.

Stakeholders in public and private sectors can participate and contribute to FinTIP by confidentially sharing information on cyber threats, incidents, and IT vulnerabilities in near real-time.

At the national level, FinTIP serves as a bridge to connect and facilitate cross-sector information exchange between the financial sector and other economic sectors via entities such as the National Cyber Security Agency (NACSA), CyberSecurity Malaysia (CSM), Malaysian Communication and Multimedia Commission (MCMC) and Securities Commission Malaysia (SC), said the central bank.