Vice Chairman Kyle S. Hauptman Statement Following the Staff Briefing on Cybersecurity Current Events and Trends

As Prepared for Delivery on April 22, 2021

You’ve heard me say this before, the pandemic took ten years of digital evolution and accelerated it in to one year. It’s as if life hit ‘fast-forward.’

In fact, nearly 6 million members signed up for online access to their credit unions in 2020. Of the nearly 125 million credit union members in the U.S. today, 71 million utilize their credit unions’ online services. Those numbers are going up, not down.

Mr. Davis, your presentation today is a significant reminder for all of us, and I’d like to thank you, and all of the staff engaged in this substantial work. I’d also like to thank Board Member Hood for elevating your position to Special Advisor to the Chairman. It was a prescient and important move that continues to serve the agency and credit unions well. I’ve been informed that you’re one of the highest-performing NCUA employees.

I have one question:

• A lot of the losses to the Share Insurance Fund are from fraud at the credit unions, committed BY credit union employees. We recently had to deal with a decades-old credit union that collapsed entirely because of fraud by one of its employees.
  
  Your regularly scheduled cyber-security briefing gives us an opportunity we wouldn’t have otherwise to shine a light on fraud detection/prevention. I understand credit unions have a myriad of systems and requirements in place to protect against fraud – cyber or otherwise – however, could you elaborate on strategies that you believe would deter or detect internal fraudsters?

Thank you, Johnny.

Mr. Chairman, this concludes my remarks on this topic.