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New Arizona Cybersecurity Protections Target Banking System

By Heather van Blokland
Published: Monday, May 21, 2018 - 7:31pm
Updated: Tuesday, May 22, 2018 - 12:11pm
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A Washington D.C. think tank said cyberattacks are one of the greatest risks to the American financial sector.

Fred Bellamy is a partner with Ryley, Carlock and Applewhite, a regional firm covering business law. He said cryptocurrency and blockchain are having a big impact on cybersecurity.

"There’s a lot of promise in the technology and a lot of potentially great developments with the technology but there’s also kind of a gold rush mentality and it’s a bit of a wild, wild west thing," Bellamy said.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reports $76 trillion of GDP globally affected by cyberattacks. $20.2 trillion of that occurs in the U.S. The report comes as Goodyear officials shut down the city’s online payment system after a cybersecurity attack earlier this month.

Bellamy also said three states were hacked Monday morning by cyber hacktivists who say they are fighting censorship, with New Mexico being among them. Bellamy said cyber hacks are getting worse and more serious, noting the Interbank system in Mexico was just hacked a few days ago.

“For one thing, it makes a lot of people a target because there’s so much money going into things like bitcoin and so forth,” he said.

Bellamy said the legal environment is getting a lot tougher in response to all of these hacks and state governments are upping their protections.

Arizona’s House Bill 2154 was signed this legislative session, expanding the definition of “personal information” and also requires notice be given within 45 days of a security system breach. And if the breach involves more than 1,000 people, the Arizona Attorney General and nationwide consumer reporting agencies must also be notified. 

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