Vulnerable Areas of Industrial Security Operations: Industrial

Vulnerable Areas of Industrial Security Operations:

Industrial security has become one of the most important aspects in the business world because of the need to protect the business' assets and enhance productivity. The need for industrial security is also fueled by the growth of the industrial sector that is constantly changing. The backbone of the every industrial environment or sector is security because of the vulnerable areas within these sectors. Some of the threats that a business is likely to face in industrial operations include sabotage, espionage, competition, utility industry security issues, and transportation challenges.

The banking sector is one of the industries that are likely to experience several vulnerabilities in the operations of the banks. As one of the major players in the American banking industry, Bank of America has some vulnerable areas. First, the financial institution is likely to experience espionage, which involves technical means and attempts by different agents to gain access to information. Similar to other players in the industry, Bank of America's cyber infrastructure is vulnerable to cyber attacks. Since the nature of the attack is sophisticated, it becomes increasingly difficult for the financial institution to defend itself against (Strohm & Engleman, 2012).

Secondly, the institution's cyber infrastructure or online platform is still a vulnerable area to sabotage. Sabotage is described as an attempt to disrupt or damage the operations of a business and its productivity. Cyber infrastructure is vulnerable to this threat since an individual or group can flood the bank's website with traffic to an extent that the institution's online services are unavailable to consumers and disrupting transactions. The most common method used by such individuals or groups is DDoS or Distributed Denial of Service that takes control of commercial servers that play a critical role in the online services. In some cases, fraudsters attack internal servers and systems through initiatives launched internally by a disgruntled employee.

In addition to the cyber infrastructure, Bank of America is also vulnerable to phishing attacks that have been increasing in the banking sector in the past few years. This is vulnerability in the institution's utility services because of its potential to affect the entire operations of the bank. Under this vulnerability, fraudsters create extremely sophisticated messaging systems that target all operations within the bank including customers' bank accounts. Phishing is a major threat in this industry to an extent that it's ranked as the third threat among fraud threats (McGlasson, 2011).

Due to the probable impact of these vulnerabilities and threats, Bank of America should take important countermeasures to lessen their likelihood and enhance industrial security in its entire operations. One of the major ways for the bank to establish countermeasures against cyber attacks and phishing is through modern security modes that have been developed to deal with sophisticated attacks. These modern security measures not only involve developing systems to mitigate the attacks but providing adequate training to employees who deal with such threats or attacks. Actually, many IT staff mandated with the task of dealing with these vulnerabilities state that they have insufficient expertise, personnel, and effective security technology as well as inadequate budget resources.