No credit union can wipe out every cyber risk, and chasing that goal tends to leave teams exhausted and overwhelmed.
MDT, a Credit Union Service Organization (CUSO) that helps credit unions find their way through complicated financial technology ecosystems, has released a report built around a more realistic aim: Making Your Credit Union a Harder Target: A Practical Approach to Cybersecurity in an Evolving Threat Landscape.
Think of it like locking up a house. Burglars rarely go for the place with the deadbolt, the lit porch and the alarm sticker. They go for the one with the unlatched window. The report applies that logic to credit unions of every size. Threats shift fast, tech environments keep sprawling, and AI now hands new tools to defenders and criminals alike. The answer, according to MDT, is to close routine gaps, protect the most critical assets, tighten identity and access controls, and build security into business decisions from the start.
“You can’t eliminate every single cyber risk, but you can make your credit union a harder target,” said Jason Sharabani, Senior Manager of Internal Audit & Compliance at MDT. “That starts with understanding what matters most, controlling access appropriately and ensuring the basics are consistently executed, making it more difficult for an attacker to get in or move through the organization once inside.”
The report lays out several priorities:
- Identify the most critical systems and data
- Keep systems patched, supported and properly configured
- Review employee and administrative access regularly
- Bring Security and Compliance into business decisions from day one
- Extend cybersecurity expectations across the full vendor lifecycle
AI gets its own look, too. On the attacker side, it can make phishing and social-engineering attempts more convincing and easier to churn out at scale. On the defender side, it can help security teams sift through information, monitor activity and automate repetitive tasks.
“AI is changing the game on both sides,” said Montana Arble, Senior Security Architect at MDT. “Organizations need to understand the risks AI introduces while also finding responsible ways to use it to strengthen their own defenses. We need AI to defeat AI.”
If you want a place to start, pick one item from the list above this week. Map out your most critical systems, or audit who has administrative access. Both are small jobs, and both make you a tougher target.