Cybercriminals Build Massive Banking Fraud System in the Cloud

The international ring targeted accounts with an average of $300,000 to $600,000, and attempted to transfer as much as $130,000 to bogus business accounts, Intel-owned McAfee said Tuesday. During McAfee did not know how much money was in fact stolen, the vendor estimates that it ranged from $75 million to $2.5 billion.

What is unparalleled about the fraud

What is unparalleled about the fraud was the amount of automation used, a feat made possible through the use of cloud computing, Marcus said. The combination of remote servers and an intimate knowledge of banking transaction systems made it possible to automate the theft, to put it more exactly than simply stealing user names and passwords and having someone manually transfer money from a computer.

Efficient, flexible, reliable. Cloud computing has been pitched as the then big thing, however is but to get its due. 2012 is going to be the year of the cloud.

If your cloud service provider doesn't have adequate provisioning for fail-over scenarios, business continuity may become a distant dream.

Why do some enterprise managers decide to brave their way into the new and unknown of cloud-based services? At times it's simply because the old research just isn't working out that so then anymore.