Are there so many security tools that can't talk to each other making financial institutions more vulnerable to cyber attacks?

I hosted my first#CiscoChat last week together with my @CiscoSecurity colleagues, Stephen Marchewitz and Dmitry Kuchynski. I was thrilled to be joined by two IDC experts, Christian Christiansen, Security Analyst and Bill Fearnley, Jr, Research Director.

While I know that "brevity is the soul of wit," it wasn't easy being limited to 140 characters in every response!

We started the chat by asking the panel where they thought the top areas of focus in security that financial services should consider in 2016. Each panelist offered their own perspective from avoiding 'bad actors' to segmentation, to sharing intelligence with affiliates, to balancing both preventative and detective cyber activities.

When it came to the question about too many security tools, the panel agreed that many CISO's are afraid to miss out and risk getting breached.

Data aggregation and compliance is an every day concern for financial institutions. As Bill put it, banks struggle because of three things:

As Chris put it, compliance reporting is a blessing and a curse.

The burning question we asked was where do they think hackers are looking to attack next. It was great to see our audience chiming in:

The panel shared areas like emails for insider trading, transaction logging, social media, mobile devices and text.....Don't just try to prevent from the outside, train your staff and freshen up internal controls.....It only takes one employee to open the wrong email or click on a bad link.

It was great to hear and share insights on how digital business models impact security interests for financial institutions. In some ways, technology has made security more complicated and in other cases, technology has increased our protection from cyber attacks.

Together with my @CiscoSecurity colleagues, Stephen Marchewitz and Dmitry Kuchynski, we thank our friends from IDC, Christian Christiansen and Bill Fearnley, Jr, for such an interactive and fun hour. It was the fastest hour that I have had recently! Please view ourCyber Attacks ahead. Are you ready?Storify recap here. If you joined the conversation, please let me know your thoughts on the session!

I hope you'll join me on April 26^thwhen I'll be hosting my second#CiscoChat and the topic will be optimizing the customer interaction. Please visit our Financial services page and follow us on Twitter @CiscoFSI for more updates and insights.