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OCC Tells Community Banks to Better Shield Themselves Against Cyber-Attacks

By Brian Orsak

Increasingly vulnerable to sophisticated computer hacking, community banks should reassess their defenses against cybercriminals, U.S. Treasury Department officials told bankers Tuesday. In a teleconference, officials with the department's Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) exhorted the nation's smallest depository institutions to consider which parties have access to their internal networks and prepare plans for the eventuality that foreign governments, hacktivists or organized crime groups will attempt to bypass their cybersecurity measures. Agency officials are concerned that the number of attacks is growing, in part because of the ease with which hacking software can be obtained and the global...

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