Group-IB, one of the global cybersecurity leaders headquartered in Singapore, has recently become a technological partner and cybersecurity advisor to ABI Lab, the Italian research and innovation centre for the banking sector comprising of 120 Banks and 70 ICT companies, promoting the innovation and digitalisation of the whole Italian financial and insurance backbone. In addition to the partnership, Group-IB, which has its own certified Computer Emergency response team (CERT-GIB), will now be supplying high-fidelity cyber threat intelligence to CERTFin, the Italian Financial CERT. Led by the Bank of Italy, ABI (Italian Banking Association) and run by ABI Lab, CERTFin is a renown public-private organization tasked with increasing the cyber risk management capacity and resilience of the Italian financial system.
As a technological partner of ABI Lab, Group-IB has been advising CERTFin for some time already on acute financial sector threats and ways to mitigate them. Due to its battle-tested competence and experience in disrupting cybercrime in more than 60 countries, Group-IB was recently selected as a provider of cyber threat intelligence for CERTFin, which acts as a central hub for the exchange of operational and strategic information about cyber threats for Italy’s entire financial sector.
As a world class financial and commercial hub, Italy is being increasingly targeted by cyber threat actors. According to Group-IB’s latest Hi-Tech Crime Trends report 2021/2022, Italian companies became the third most popular in Europe for the sellers of access to compromised networks they accounted for 13% of all initial access offers in Europe.
Leveraging its trademark Threat Intelligence & Attribution system, used by Europe’s leading banks, Group-IB will be entrusted with an important task of providing CERTFin with insights into phishing and scam campaigns carried out by cybercriminals, attempts to sell data stolen from local financial institutions, sudden interest in purchasing accesses to potentially compromised networks of these organisations as well as delivering general insight on current threats and dark web trends which could jeopardise the operations of the entities supported by CERTFin.
As such, CERTFin will now have access to Group-IB’s regularly updated collection of compromised payment cards issued by Italian banks. The data is extracted from several proprietary sources such as botnet and JS-sniffer infrastructure, as well as underground card shops and marketplaces monitored by Group-IB. Information on compromised payment records provided by Group-IB as part of the annual Europol-coordinated Carding Action helped to save more than 60 million euro over two years for European banks. Last year’s anti-fraud effort was led by the Italian law enforcement agencies and supported by the United Kingdom, leading card schemes, and Group-IB.
Group-IB is one of the few organizations on the global cybersecurity market that manages its own private 24/7 intelligence-driven Computer Emergency Response Team, which is a member of the Forum of Incident Response and Security Teams (FIRST). CERT-GIB is also an accredited member of of Trusted Introducer, established by the European CERT community in 2000. Group-IB continuously contributes to reducing the global impact of cybercrime. In 2021, Group-IB’s Europe-based cyber investigations unit took part in Italy’s Guardia di Finanza operation NO-VAX FREE targeting cybercriminals who sold fake Green Pass on Telegram. This experience makes Group-IB capable of meeting CERTFin’s needs to help Italian financial market players with the mitigation and researching of the most relevant cyber threats.
The financial services industry continues to be highly targeted, with cybercriminals always attempting to make inroads directly through banks’ networks or by going after consumers directly. Group-IB’s ability to deliver on the promise of advanced threat intelligence supports us in helping our users to remain secure and better prepared. By adding them to our lab environment, we are confident that defensive capabilities will strengthen for all involved.
ABI Lab’s General Manager and CERTFin‘s Chief Operating Officer
Our collaboration is built on shared values. We are honoured to support CERTFin with the consortium’s efforts in prevention of cyberattacks in the Italian financial sector as it echoes with our mission of fighting digital crime worldwide. The experiences gathered by Group-IB in the last 18 years in collaborations with similar organisations around the world, digital forensics and incident response operations in different time zones and regions, and the company’s continuous contribution to local and international cyber police operations makes us a good fit to assist ABI Lab and CERTFin in strengthening Italian financial system’s cyber resilience.
Group-IB’s head of business development in Italy
