TD Bank taps Tel Aviv for cybersecurity base
Move comes after Equifax, credit-data company, suffered cyberattack in the summer
Toronto-Dominion Bank is opening a new office in Tel Aviv to tap Israel’s cybersecurity talent as companies of all stripes race to fortify their defences amid mounting threats.
Jeff Henderson, TD’s chief information officer, says that the bank plans to invest between $3 million and $5 million in its Tel Aviv office annually and aims to hire as many as 12 staff within the next year.
Tel Aviv has a deep pool of cybersecurity talent coming from local universities as well as the military, he added. “The demand for cybersecurity talent is at an all-time high, by everybody, and the supply in North America is limited. So it requires us to be more creative . . . This is good evidence that we’re willing to go outside of our borders, outside of our market, and to open an office in order to get that talent,” he said.
The cybersecurity office in Tel Aviv, which TD says is a first for a Canadian bank, comes less than a month after credit-data company Equifax announced that it suffered a massive cyberattack this past summer that compromised the personal information of roughly 143 million U.S. consumers and “limited” Canadian and U.K. consumers.
On Monday, Equifax revised the number of consumers potentially impacted in the breach — bumping up the total in the U.S. to145.5 million and reducing the number in Canada from an estimated 100,000 to 8,000.
For these Canadian consumers, Equifax says the information that may have been accessed includes names, addresses, social insurance numbers and, in “limited cases,” credit card numbers.
And as banks increasingly interact with their customers in the digital realm, either online or via mobile devices rather than in physical branches, the need for strong cybersecurity becomes more pressing.
“As we’re building a more digital bank . . . it introduces a premium on making sure that we’re being very careful and we are managing our risk,” Henderson said.
TD has been ramping up its direct investment in cybersecurity by 30 per cent to 35 per cent, compounded annually, each year, Henderson said, a trend he expects to continue or increase. In the last fiscal year, he estimates TD made a direct investment in cybersecurity of $150 million to $200 million.