SWIFT, a provider of financial messaging services, has embarked on a campaign to increase the level of public awareness for ongoing security features across its interface products – the new initiative is part of SWIFT’s Customer Security Programme, which was launched to help customers undergo and implement existing security features with the hopes of fostering more secure access to the SWIFT infrastructure, according to a SWIFT statement.
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Presently, SWIFT’s product suite includes a wide spectrum of inbuilt security tools as well as versatile solutions and capabilities for a global clientele. As such, these functions help users maintain access to the broader SWIFT network, whilst safely managing their respective relationships.
New Areas of Focus
The primary areas of emphasis in the new campaign will be to focus on raising awareness for SWIFT’s Relationship Management Application (RMA) and 2-Factor Authentication (2FA) in SWIFT products.
RMA acts as a filter to grant users the ability to arbitrate and manage their correspondent relationships – in essence, this function acts as a first line of defense against unwanted or unexpected message flows. The use of RMA also allows customers to mitigate the risk of receiving unwanted or fraudulent Payments , which is integrated into a multitude of SWIFT interfaces.
By extension, SWIFT’s push to adopt 2FA across its product suite will aim to help customers protect access to their SWIFT interfaces in a more robust manner. SWIFT’s most current releases will look to complement the products’ existing 2FA functionality with an out-of-the-box solution that caters to smaller and medium sized customers.
Gottfried Leibbrandt, CEO, SWIFT
According to Stephen Gilderdale, Head of SWIFT’s recently launched Customer Security Programme, in a recent statement on the campaign: “We are focused not only on encouraging customers to secure their environments – which is the most important defence against cyber-attacks, but also on further enhancing security features in SWIFT products and on promoting community adoption of our existing tools and controls."
“We are committed to playing an important role in developing the industry response to the cyber security challenge. Investment for our Customer Security Programme has been earmarked by the Board, and work is well underway on its further development and roll-out,” reiterated SWIFT’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Gottfried Leibbrandt, in an accompanying statement.
“By working in close consultation with our customer community and promoting the use of existing security features and controls, SWIFT is helping institutions to protect themselves against potential cyber security threats,” he added.
Last week, SWIFT made headlines after its Watch portfolio of solutions was adopted by the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICBC), helping analyze the bank’s traffic across its comprehensive network. Per the new integration, ICBC will look to tap into SWIFT’s targeted business analysis and insights via its Business Intelligence (BI) solutions, Watch Traffic Analytics , Watch Banking Analytics, and Watch Banking Analytics Premium.
