JPMorgan had exodus of tech talent before hackers breached defences

New York/Washington, Sept 5: As hackers pierced JPMorgan Chase’s defences in June, the bank’s cybersecurity chief was just getting acquainted with his employer and its sprawling technology infrastructure.

Greg Rattray, a for mer US Air Force commander for infor mation warfare, became JPMorgan’s head of information security that month after upheaval at the highest levels of the bank’s tech division. His predecessor, Anthony Belfiore, had resigned early this year to join at least five JPMorgan leaders at First Data. In between, Anish Bhimani was acting security officer while holding at least one other tech role.

“It sucks that this happened at the beginning of Greg’s watch, but this is a legacy issue,” said Tom Keller mann, chief cybersecurity officer at anti-virus software fir m Trend Micro Inc. “They had an acting person who was juggling way too much, with no one fully dedicated to the role for a bit of time.”

JPMorgan, led by chief executive Officer Jamie Dimon, 58, has rushed to determine the scope of the assault and restore confidence in security at the biggest US lender. While hackers targeted other banks’ systems, JPMorgan is the only bank said to have had gigabytes of data stolen, including infor mation on customer accounts.

The breach went undetected until mid-August, months after hackers initially exploited a flaw in the company’s website to gain entry to inter nal systems, people familiar with the fir m’s review have said. Investigators believe the stolen files ended up in a Russian data center, the people said.

The bank hasn’t seen elevated levels of fraud, said Patricia Wexler, a JPMorgan spokeswoman. She declined to comment further or make Rattray, 51, available for an interview.

The breach contrasts with the company’s perfor mance in late 2012, when a group attacked the biggest US banks. In that episode, JPMorgan’s website ran more reliably as rivals including Bank of America. suffered repeat outages.

JPMorgan’s technology leaders began leaving after April 2013, when the bank’s co-chief operating officer, Frank Bisignano, 55, departed to become CEO of First Data, the Atlanta-based payment processor. He has known Dimon since the 1980s, serving as his longtime deputy. Bisignano’s last job at JPMorgan included a focus on technology and security. Bloomberg