Team 1 Sec4.4

Santtu 23:27, 21 October 2005 (PDT)

Lowest Cost Provider of Defenses -- Financial

Financial systems are by their very nature vast and widely connected. Such an environment contains many points of vulnerability and thus it is impossible, or very near impossible, to determine a single lowest cost provider for upgraded defenses for the system. The lowest cost would be provided by all parties working together to provide the necessary multiple layers of protection. Each provider can address their areas of the system in the most efficient manner.

The difficulty of using a single provider of upgraded defenses is that in a large system a single component can not guarantee full protection for the entire system. Although all communications can be strongly encrypted, it does not provide any protection from an attacker attacking a router to which the computers are connected -- such an attck could at minimum result in denial of service at critical time periods thus exposing the financial institution to liability.