I. Cybersecurity; Its Importance and Relevance – How We Got to Where We Are Today -

In the past few months, the White House, Home Depot, JP Morgan, Hard Rock Hotels, Tesla, the St. Louis Federal Reserve, the Internal Revenue Service and many other institutions have suffered well-publicized cybersecurity breaches. In fact, very recently the Office of Personnel Management — the agency that manages background checks, pension payments and job training for the federal government — announced that it suffered a cyber-attack in which it believes that hackers stole the personal information of more than 4 million federal employees. In a recent survey of more than 800 information technology (IT) security professionals across 19 industries in seven countries, more than half of the respondents said they will "likely" be victim to a successful cyber-attack this year, and almost three quarters of the respondents disclosed that they fell victim to successful cyber-attacks in the prior year. In fact, the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation recently disclosed in its 2015 Systemic Risk Barometer Study that almost half of the respondents listed cybersecurity as their top concern, and more than three quarters listed it among their top five overall concerns.

As a result, it is often said that there are only two types of financial services firms: those that have experienced cybersecurity breaches and addressed them, and those that have experienced cybersecurity breaches and are unaware.