[Dave Birch] No doubt you will all have choked on your cornflakes this morning hearing about the sorry tale of Jerome Kerviel, the so-called “rogue trader” (I thought they all were!) who threw away FIVE BILLION EUROS of Societe Generale’s money and, in passing, may have left the world financial system on the brink of collapse. Now
Societe Generale (amusingly, the “Global Equities Derivatives House of the Year”) must have had an army of compliance-wallahs, ticking boxes here and there, and spent a fortune on management consultants and auditors to comply with
Basel II and every other directive under the sun. And yet, as the FT tells us,
Mr Kerviel appears to have built up his losses over a short period using accounts and passwords belonging to colleagues.
[From FT.com / In depth – The rogue trader who cost SocGen €5bn]
Well, well. And there was me thinking that investment banks with extremely valuable data to protect would have used some form of 2FA or even 3FA to protect themselves against losses that could extend into billions. Perhaps they decided against smart cards on the grounds of cost, or doing proper risk analysis on the grounds that it was waste of money, or something like that.
Continue reading “Is this the world’s biggest identity fraud?”
