Visa teams up with FireEye to launch cyber intelligence programme

Visa has announced the launch of a threat awareness programme that looks to assess and combat cyber attacks that constantly threaten payment systems around the world.

 

Clamping down on cyber attacks

The Visa Threat Intelligence platform becomes the first product available as part of a new global strategic partnership with online security group FireEye. The technology will deliver up-to-date reports and threat information to merchants and payment companies so they can effectively protect themselves from breaches.

Before the end of 2015, subscribers to the threat intelligence tool will be able to access a sophisticated web portal that will provide information on cyber-attacks, including alerts on malicious actors, methods, trends in cyber-attacks, and in-depth forensic analysis from recent data breaches.

For larger payment processors, they will have the chance to get their hands on a more powerful API that will transfer threat indicator data into their own security systems, allowing them to potentially neutralise the cyber threat before it hits their payment systems.

 

‘Providing targeted intelligence to the payments industry’

FireEye has been working hard to become the market leader in cyber threat analysis.

According to its latest M-Trends report, over the past 12 months, threat actors have used stealthy new tactics to move laterally and maintain a presence in victim environments. This is something that Mark Nelsen, senior vice president of Risk Products and Business Intelligence, Visa Inc, is looking to stamp out.

‘‘Each week, merchants and card issuers receive thousands of alerts about possible cyber-attacks, making it difficult to know which ones to focus on,” said Nelsen.

‘‘Visa Threat Intelligence removes the noise by assessing hundreds of threat indicators and serving-up the most important and timely information. Users can then isolate and address those threats that are the most pressing and potentially damaging to their business and customers.’’

This is just the beginning of Visa and FireEye’s partnership, with the two ‘expected to roll out additional solutions to identify malicious communications’ by early 2016.

‘‘Attack groups are exceptionally skilled at executing an attack across multiple organizations, identifying successful techniques and scaling those methods to an entire industry,’’ said Grady Summers, CTO, FireEye, Inc.

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