Advanced hackers are not just knocking on doors in the digital era; they are already inside. Cybersecurity for the financial services sector is now about preparing for the inevitable breach rather than installing a high fence. This is where the Cyber Operational Resilience Intelligence-led Exercises (COIRE) Framework is handy.
The COIRE Framework is the rigorous, reality-check program put in place by the Australian financial sector to test, challenge, and ultimately ensure that our most important institutions are capable of overcoming the most potent cyberattacks the world has to offer. In 2020, the CORIE framework was released by the Council of Financial Regulators (CFR) to evaluate and illustrate the cyber maturity and resilience of organisations in the Australian financial services sector. With the help of several financial institutions, a pilot program under the CORIE framework was successfully completed in 2021.
In this blog, we will look at what the CORIE Framework is, key elements of CORIE framework, its significance, how it works and how financial institutions can use it to safeguard their company’s operations, customers, and branding.
What is the CORIE Framework?
The CORIE Framework, a cybersecurity testing approach to boost financial institutions’ cyber resilience by simulating real attacks, is developed by the Council of Financial Regulators (CFR) of Australia. The CFR released a framework to guarantee preparedness and resilience against cyberattacks.
The CORIE framework’s objective is to protect Australian financial markets by evaluating and enhancing financial institutions’ cyber resilience against recognised threats. COIRE is essentially an organised, intelligence-driven exercise framework designed to assess a company’s ability to combat sophisticated cyberthreats.
The cybersecurity framework seeks to enhance traditional security testing by evaluating a financial institution’s whole capacity to prevent, recognise, respond to, and recover from cyberattacks involving people, processes, and technology through Red Team scenarios that are driven by specific threat intelligence.
What are the Key Elements of CORIE?
For the purpose to ensure a comprehensive assesment, the COIRE framework is designed around several key elements. The following are some key elements of the CORIE framework for you to understand: The scenarios based on threat intelligence:
1. Threat Intelligence-based Scenarios
Based on the Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) of recognised adversaries actively attacking the financial services sector, specific testing scenarios and attack patterns are developed. This guarantees that the simulation is realistic and relevant. To create the finest scenarios at this point, it is essential to collaborate with current, industry-specific, and local threat intelligence.
2. Adversary Simulation (Red Team)
Red team, also known as adversary simulation, is a cybersecurity exercise in which a group of ethical hackers simulate real-world attacks to assess and improve an organisation’s defences against different threats. By simulating the actions of a particular adversary attack or a wider variety of attacks scenarios, the aim is to identify weakness in people, technology, and processes and assess the organisation’s ability to recognise, respond to, and recover from an attack.
3. Attack Execution, Reporting, and Remediation
After the simulated attack, comprehensive reports point out the organisation’s shortcomings and weaknesses. This results in an approach to repair that may be implemented to increase resilience. The process of reporting findings from the Attack Execution stage and turning them into practical, doable recommendations to increase resilience is covered by the reporting component of the CORIE framework. Additionally, at this stage, the Council of Financial Regulators receives reports on the exercises and their results.
4. Purple and Gold Team Exercises
Exercises for the Gold and Purple Teams are essential to the end-to-end process of delivering CORIE exercises.
- Purple Team: The offensive (Red) and defensive (Blue) teams work together during Purple Team exercises to systematically recreate attack chains and make sure the organisation’s defences are strengthened.
- Gold Team: The main goal of Gold Team exercises is to assess the senior leadership’s crisis management and incident response abilities.
How the CORIE Framework Works?
The CORIE framework tests and enhances an organisation’s resilience by modelling realistic cyberattacks that are based on intelligence about real attackers.
It works in four main stages:
- Threat Intelligence Collection: Realistic threat actors (such as nation-state organisations or cybercriminals) and their tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTPs) are identified by analysts.
- Red Team Adversary Simulation: Over the course of weeks or months, a specialised team simulates actual attack techniques to replicate these attackers attacking the institution’s vital business functions.
- Crisis Management and Reaction (Blue, Purple, and Gold Teams):
– Internal defenders, or the Blue Team, are able to identify and react.
– Attacks are replayed and learned from by the Purple Team.
– During a cyber crisis, the Gold Team (executives) rehearses decision-making. - Remediation & Reporting: The findings are compiled into a comprehensive report that highlights vulnerabilities, gaps in resilience, and doable actions to strengthen defences.
The CORIE Frameworks’ Five Steps
Building and maintaining cyber resilience inside an organisation is the goal of the five steps for (CORIE) Framework compliance. The procedures include:
- Risk Assessment: In order to map potential vulnerabilities, identify vital assets, and analyse current threats, businesses must first examine their present security posture before beginning an exercise.
- Plan and Execute Testing: Organisations need to practice Red Team exercises that simulate actual cyberthreats. The exercises should evaluate detection, response, and recovery capabilities and replicated after real adversary tactics. In this step, the organisation’s detection, response, and recovery capabilities are tested in a controlled setting.
- Analyse Response and Detection: The Crisis Management team (Gold Team) and the internal security team (Blue Team) are evaluated based on how well they identify, contain, and handle the hypothetical cyberattacks. This involves evaluating the efficacy of security operations centres, incident response procedures, and monitoring systems.
- Implement Improvements: A detailed post-assessment report highlights cybersecurity control’s advantages, drawbacks and gaps. To stop future attacks, organisations need to prioritise remediation activities, strengthen security regulations, and improve defensive measures using those results.
- Constant Adherence to Compliance: Compliance with CORIE is a continuous procedure. To keep up with changing threats, financial institutions should incorporate CORIE exercises into their long-term cybersecurity strategy. This ensures continued resilience against changing threats and helps to improve and reinforce the organisation’s security posture over time.
Why CORIE Framework Matters for Financial Institutions?
The CORIE framework is important for financial institutions, because it offers a systematic, intelligence-driven strategy for enhancing cyber resilience, guaranteeing regulatory compliance, and eventually preserving the stability of the financial system as a whole. Finding systemic weaknesses in the financial industry is one of the goals of the CORIE framework, which also attempts to alert Australian regulators (APRA, Reserve Bank of Australia, and ASIC) to possible threats to the nation’s financial stability.
Here is why CORIE Framework matters for Financial Institutions:
- Boosts Operational Resilience: Organisations gain knowledge about how to continue providing essential services in situations of threats.
- Complies to regulatory expectations: Exhibits proactive risk management and aids in meeting standards established by Australian financial authorities.
- Preparation for sophisticated adversaries: Simulates not just general threats, but also attacks from highly experienced cybercriminals.
- Increases stakeholder confidence: Preserves market stability, customer trust, and reputation.
Also Read: What is the NIST Cybersecurity Framework and Why Is It Important?
CORIE Implementation: Steps for the Financial Institutions
The CORIE framework is implemented through a multiphase, organised program that tests and enhances a financial institution’s (FI) ability to withstand actual cyber threats.
The following are the crucial actions for financial institutions:
Phase 1: Preparation
Preparing for the simulation is the main goal of this phase.
- Scoping and Intelligence: The FI and a third-party threat intelligence supplier determine the exercise’s parameters, highlighting important business lines and systems. Crucially, to construct a realistic attack scenario, current threat intelligence is collected on specific, known adversaries.
- Team Readiness: The external Red Team (attackers) and White Team (oversight) as well as the internal teams of the FI (defence, IT, and leadership) are well-established and well-versed in their responsibilities and the guidelines for the exercise.
Phase 2: Testing
This is the stage of the attack simulation.
- Adversary Simulation: Against the FI’s live production environment, the Red Team simulates the Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures (TTPs) of actual threat actors by carrying out the realistic attack scenario created in Phase 1.
- Defence Assessment: Using people, procedures, and technology as indicators, the FI’s capacity to Prevent, Detect, and Respond to the attack is evaluated in real-time. Like a true adversary, the time frame is frequently prolonged (weeks or months) to provide the Red Team ample opportunity to take advantage of opportunities.
Phase 3: Closure & Remediation
The goal of this stage is to learn and get better.
- Reporting: A thorough report is produced that details the actions taken by the Red Team, the vulnerabilities they took advantage of, and the reaction errors they noticed.
- Remediation strategy: With the objective to fix all the problems found, the FI creates a workable strategy.
- Uplift and Replay: Purple Team activities can be used to increase the FI’s detection and defence capabilities by methodically replicating the attacks. The senior leadership’s crisis response is set to the test through Gold Team exercises. The findings are reported to the Council of Financial Regulators (CFR).
Final Insights
The CORIE Framework is an advanced, intelligence-based strategy for financial services cyber resilience. Institutions can find vulnerabilities, strengthen their protections, and guarantee continuity by testing vital operations and simulating realistic attacks. Operational resilience is crucial in a world where cyber threats are becoming more frequent. Financial institutions are better positioned to safeguard their operations, stakeholders, and the larger financial system when they adopt frameworks like CORIE. It is a continuous improvement approach that assists institutions adopt to the changing threat landscape.
Being at the centre of Australia’s economic infrastructure, Sydney’s financial sector is more vulnerable to evolving cyberthreats. Operational resilience must be a strategic priority, not an afterthought, as laws and regulations progress and threats become more complex. Act now if your organisation has not already conducted a cyber resilience exercise that is in line with CORIE. Do not hesitate to get in touch with us and schedule a consultation appointment at Binary IT to strengthen your financial institution against the constantly changing cyber threat landscape as the CORIE Framework fosters resilience, confidence, and the capacity to bounce back quickly from setbacks.
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