Thwarting Data Nightmares

The finance industry has built a digital vault for sensitive data in case of a hack. So far, no one has had to tap into it

- Andrew Martin

A group of financial firms has adopted the idea of a vault for the age of the cyberattack, building a tool to encrypt and lock away the most critical customer account data at the end of each workday. Now it's being expanded to other financial sectors.

Participants in Sheltered Harbor, a nonprofit industry initiative, store key information in a vault that's separate from the institution's infrastructure.

They also must devise a plan to restore operations and services as quickly as possible in the event of a cyberattack or other crippling event. This plan includes designating a restoration platform-which could be another financial institution or a service provider-that can recover data from the vault and quickly provide services to customers.