A New Posture: Reacting Anticipating

Part 2 of an interaction with Madhur Joshi, CISO, HDB Financial Services and Pradeep Kumar Rangi, Chief Risk Officer, IIFL Home Finance:

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Ravi Lalwani: How are hackers targeting WFH employees? How are financial organizations securing such employees effectively?

Pradeep Kumar Rangi: Attackers increasingly target remote and hybrid workforces through spear-phishing, spoofed collaboration platforms, credential-harvesting campaigns, unsecured home WiFi networks, and even MFA-fatigue techniques designed to make employees inadvertently approve access requests. In this environment, defending the human perimeter has become as critical as securing the network perimeter.

The BFSI sector has responded by deploying Zero-Trust Architecture, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure, secure VPN and ZTNA controls, EDR/XDR-based endpoint monitoring, and automated patching disciplines. Strong multi-factor authentication, restricted USB and print privileges, and data-loss-prevention controls are now nonnegotiable hygiene measures.

Yet the most resilient defence blends technology with human preparedness. Companies are institutionalizing continuous cyber hygiene and human factor vigilance through simulated phishing exercises, contextual fraud awareness programs, and mandatory voice back verification for sensitive approvals.

Technology can block known threats, but trained employees stop the intelligent and adaptive ones. In today's threat landscape, cybersecurity is no longer just a systems discipline, it is an organizational behavior discipline.

Madhur Joshi: Organizations need to preempt early on how swiftly adversaries adapt - shifting their focus from fortified corporate firewalls to the more exposed terrain of remote endpoints. While their strategy has evolved, their intent remains unchanged: locate the weakest link and exploit it. This is why the approach to cybersecurity cannot be purely reactive; it must be anticipatory, adaptive, and relentless.