Data breaches

Top executives from Bank of America, U.S. Bancorp, American Express, MasterCard, Microsoft and Apple are expected to participate as part of a White House summit on cybersecurity issues in California on Friday.

The creation of a new cybersecurity agency is the latest move by the Obama administration to combat the increasing threat of cyberattacks.

Hackers in several financial services industry data breaches targeted customer-contact information that is often thought of as less sensitive. But crooks can use that data and other bits of stolen info to do great harm.

Purveyors of certain cloud services, such as cloud-based lending, face continual rejection from bankers worried about security. But some say a data storage specialist could be every bit as secure as a financial institution — if not more so.

Two defendants in an alleged identity theft ring that targeted banks in New York City and Westchester County have pleaded guilty.

The White House rolled out several more cybersecurity provisions on Tuesday, including a proposal to better coordinate information sharing between the government and the private sector around cyberattacks and emerging threats.

A new push by President Obama to tighten cybersecurity at banks and other businesses could help light a fire under some firms that have historically been slower to react in the wake of a data breach and help financial institutions dealing with a tangle of confusing state laws.

Until last April, the young adviser now at the center of Morgan Stanley's massive client data breach was a sales assistant who spent the majority of his career under the tutelage of one the firm's wealth management teams.

The leak of client records at Morgan Stanley illustrates the danger posed when just one employee has unauthorized or unsecured access to sensitive information, as well as the ongoing threat to financial institutions from insider theft.

Large security incidents this year included JPMorgan Chase's August breach affecting 76 million households and seven million small businesses, Home Depot's breach of 56 million card account records it confirmed in September, and the Sony hack discovered in November, in which emails were stolen and hard drives destroyed. Here are some educated guesses about some of the security threats that will crop up next year.

Companies seeking to shield valuable data from criminals and government spying should assume the attackers have already penetrated their systems and adjust defensive strategies, security firms McAfee and Symantec said.