In the latest phishing campaign targeting FINRA member firms, attackers impersonate requests from the regulatory authority citing the potential to “attract penalties” if request information is not provided.
FINRA (Financial Industry Regulatory Authority) is an independent, non-governmental securities regulator supervised by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that regulates all securities firms and exchange markets publicly active in the U.S., as well as over 600,000 brokerage firms.
In FINRA’s latest notice, member firms are warned of a new phishing attack from the domain “gateway-finra.org” – which is not associated with FINRA. Recipients are asked to “view” a new request from FINRA, warning “late submissions may attract penalties” to add a sense of urgency to the phishing email.
They recommend (of course) not engaging with the email, first. And if a member firm has, that they notify the appropriate people within their own organization. Additionally, FINRA recommends member firms review the Phishing section of their Report on Cybersecurity Practices - 2018 which does provides the most basic details around what part of an email to scrutinize in order to identify fraudulent emails. This, and far more detail, can be taught using continual Security Awareness Training and phishing testing, helping member firms understand the nature of all kinds of phishing attacks, including those impersonating FINRA.
