Putting Banking on the Cloud Was Going to Make Everything SO Much Better. Or Something

The prospect of ALL that money online certainly made the hackers drool.

Synapse is (or at least was) a company that did financial web connecting. Connecting businesses to customers, and businesses to banks. There is (or at least was) a tiny problem. Probably more than one. The banks, and the big businesses figured out that they didn't need a middleman. And - oops - between $65 million and $96 million disappeared. (And aren't banks and such supposed to keep better records than that?)

Pixy Misa at Ambient Irony brings us the details with Daily News Stuff 2 July 2024: Beanz Meanz Heanz Edition

Democratic senators on the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs have sent a letter to fintech company Synapse, its major banking partner Evolve, and everyone else in the vicinity saying, and I quote, "What the f*ck guys? Get your sh*t sorted out or we'll come over there and sort you out." (Tech Crunch)

OK, so that isn't quite the headline from Tech Crunch say, but it does sum up the situation.

Synapse imploded a couple of months ago when its Chapter 11 reorganisation plans collapsed and it was left without enough cashflow to operate. The problem is that Synapse operated as an intermediary between its customers, their customers, and banks like Evolve. And now nobody can get their money because Synapse was handling the details and Synapse is toast.

Oh, and Evolve has been the victim of a cyberattack. Because Hackers Gonna Hack. Banks getting hacked is next level.

Synapse filed for Chapter 11 in April, but that deal collapsed. I don't think anyone has seen a dime of this money since then.

Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs, and a few others have written a strongly worded letter to the people involved, basically telling them to "get their sh*t together." Seems odd that it isn't coming from a regulatory agency. Because if millions of dollars have just vanished off the books, something is rotten somewhere.

And while the following image isn't exactly on point, it did come to mind. I don't have banking apps on my phone. (I don't like to think about how many phones I've lost.) My banking accounts are NOT tied the email account I use to communicate with family and friends. 2 factor authentication. I'm quite ready to go back to passport savings accounts - where most stuff was at least backed up on paper (I have seen the results of a building fire on bookkeeping systems), but I'm tempted. Trust the web? Trust a Johnny-Come-Lately bank? Not hardly.