Cyber-security has become a hot button issue for Wall Street firms as they seek to shore up the financial system from electronic attacks that can originate both from within and outside companies.

In 2015, companies are likely to make a substantial shift in the way they structure cyber-security defenses from the perimeter to the endpoints, according to Grigoriy Milis, chief technology officer at Richard Fleischman & Associates, an outsourced technology provider to hedge funds.

“A couple of years back there was a widespread opinion that endpoint protection is dead and everybody was shifting their defenses to the perimeter,” he said. “Today, we’re seeing almost a 180-degree reversal in this type of philosophy, and endpoint protection is coming into focus.”

A number of technologies exist for “trying to improve and address endpoint protection by creating various obstruction layers for the endpoint and encapsulating potential threats,” Milis added. “I think that endpoint protection will be one of the big focus sectors in 2015.”

According to the most recent DTCC Systemic Risk Barometer survey, completed in the third quarter of 2014 by a total of 202 respondents, including DTCC clients and stakeholders from the financial services industry, thirty-seven percent of respondents said that the probability of a high-impact event in the global financial system has increased during the past 6 months – up 16 points since the previous survey was conducted in March 2014.

The DTCC Systemic Risk Barometer was launched by Depository Trust & Clearing Corp. to assess and measure the financial industry’s sentiment on significant and emerging trends that impact the safety, resiliency and continued sustainability of the global financial system.

Sixty-four percent of respondents cite the impact of new regulations as a top five concern and 62% identified geopolitical risk as a top five concern, and 76% of all respondents indicated they have increased the amount of resources dedicated to identifying, monitoring and mitigating systemic risks over the past year.

While cyber-security is in large part driven by regulation and regulatory bodies, it’s also been well received by the financial community. “It’s not being seen as a burden,” Milis said. “It’s rather being seen as something that needs to be done, and people recognize it as something that they will have to do regardless of the regulatory bodies’ push.”

He added, “We do not expect cyber-security to fade in the background like some other initiatives driven by regulatory bodies. We expect it to continue and we expect it to evolve into more sophisticated cyber-security defenses that hedge funds and other financial companies use.”

Featured image via bluebay2014/Dollar Photo Club