Cybersecurity improvements sought for cloud financial services

The U.S. Treasury Department has recommended increased cybersecurity incident response engagement and transparency, as well as greater staff support for cloud-based financial services in an effort to mitigate cloud security risks, United Press International reports. Security vulnerability concerns have also been raised by the Treasury Department's report amid financial entities' worries that even a single cloud service provider attack may result in industry-wide ramifications. "While cloud services can have potential benefits for resilience and security, financial institutions are still exposed to risks associated with technical vulnerabilities at CSPs and face practical challenges to mitigating such risks or migrating their operations to another provider," said the Treasury Department in a statement. Meanwhile, a Cloud Services Steering Group is expected to be launched by the department next year in a bid to bolster U.S. regulator cooperation on cloud services and partnerships with the private sector, as well as the development of cloud adoption frameworks and contracts.