Utah Power Credit Union Publishes FFIEC Cybersecurity Assessment Tool

In June 2015, the FFIEC released a Cybersecurity Assessment Tool to assist credit union management with assessing their institution’s risk and needs for cyber security preparedness. The assessment is incredibly thorough and consequently extensive in length. With an ample cybersecurity assessment provided to credit unions at no cost, institutions were left unarmed against the obstacle of completing the lengthy assessment, organizing responses and interpreting the results. Several alternate solutions are starting to emerge in the credit union industry, including interactive workbook tools that utilize a spreadsheet, but is a spreadsheet your best option?

Chris Brems, Vice President of IT/Finance at the $583 million Utah Power Credit Union created CUIntranet in 2006. CUIntranet is an intranet application, created specifically for credit unions, that offers HR management, file management, ticket management, sales tracking, instant messaging and time clocks to credit unions nationwide. A recent addition to CUIntranet is a tool that helps credit unions complete the FFIEC Cybersecurity Assessment while providing access to peer data. According to Brems, "The FFIEC tool within CUIntranet makes completing the cybersecurity assessment easier." The tool also simplifies the analysis of your results and Brems will be adding a feature to copy previous assessments to minimize the time spent on periodic reevaluations. "The biggest advantage of CUIntranet's FFIEC tool is the access to peer review data", said Brems. "This allows credit unions completing the assessment to view the answers (anonymized) of other credit unions who have already completed it. I love seeing peer data to make sure our credit union is in line. We can also use this information to demonstrate to auditors what other credit unions are doing in a questioned area."

Brems believes in peer review data and collaboration to the extent that he has opened the FFIEC portion of CUIntrant to all credit unions. With 17 credit unions already having started the assessment on the CUIntranet platform, peer data is flowing in and available.

If you haven't already implemented CUIntranet’s cybersecurity assessment tool at your credit union, it’s worth taking a look at. Obviously, assessing your credit union cybersecurity is only the first step of becoming a secure credit union but without assessing your vulnerabilities you won't know where to build up your defenses.