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CHAPTER NINE | RISK MANAGEMENT
“We recognize that as the complexity, sophistication and frequency of attacks continue to increase, we need to defend against the enemy, as well as to absorb a shock and recover as quickly as possible, while continuing to clear and settle billions of dollars of daily trading activity,” Bodson wrote in the 2018 Annual Report. In some ways, the growth of fintech—which raised the likelihood of cyberattacks—also was a solution. DTCC began to explore cutting-edge technologies to help the firm quickly and efficiently identify risk trends and patterns, with the goal of enabling a more predictive and proactive approach to mitigating or extinguishing potential cyberattacks. In 2018, DTCC took steps to galvanize the industry around business resilience as a global priority and offered core principles and guidelines. Given the increasingly interconnected nature of the global markets, DTCC also launched an attestation program for clients of the firm’s clearing agency subsidiaries to provide assurances that they were following cybersecurity best practices and were knowledgeable of their recovery capabilities. The following year, the focus of DTCC’s attestation program had expanded to include third-party and vendor risks, and to use its vast amount of data to help clients support their own risk management efforts. Risk is ever-present in DTCC’s core businesses and the broader financial industry. But thanks to the firm’s proactive approach, DTCC helped lead the industry to safer practices and stronger outcomes. ■
Despite investing in technologies, analytics and third-party data to manage risk to its clients, DTCC’s leadership and employees understood that what set the firm apart and what carried it through its challenges and crises was its resolve. (Photo by Csaba Nagy courtesy of Pixabay.)
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