The BITS Fraud Reduction Program reduces fraud in the financial services industry through information sharing, best practices, analysis of emerging threats, and cooperation among member institutions and the vendor community. A number of working groups operate under the BITS Fraud Steering Committee, including groups exploring identity theft, collections practices, phishing and other e-scams, loan fraud, and legal and regulatory issues. An Internet fraud group focuses on the fraud implications of online transactions and account openings, and identifies fraud-mitigation technologies.
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The Security Working Group (SWG) strengthens the safety and soundness of financial institutions by sharing best practices and successful strategies for developing secure infrastructures, products and services, and maintaining public and private-sector confidence. Participants work with government agencies and regulators on supervisory guidance and regulations. BITS efforts have three primary goals: to encourage a higher "duty of care" by vendors selling to critical infrastructure industry companies; to promote compliance with security requirements before software products are released; and to make the patch-management process more secure and efficient and less costly to member organizations.
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The Vendor Management Working Group strengthens the security and privacy of services provided by third parties in support of the financial services industry. The group's work builds on the BITS Framework for Managing Risk for Information Technology (IT) Service Provider Relationships, which provides the financial services industry and service providers with risk-management strategies for evaluating IT outsourcing relationships. Current work addresses the role and supervision of dependent providers to financial institutions' service providers.
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The BITS Regulatory initiative develops and maintains strong, standing relationships with financial and non-financial regulators and develops and delivers detailed analysis of regulatory and supervisory proposals and related industry efforts. Projects include topics such as the ID Theft Red Flags Final Rule, Rulemaking for Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, Social Security Numbers usage, and the ICANN Whois database.
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