Anti-money laundering (AML) for financial services firms is evolving as they broaden their usage of the behavior detection at the heart of AML and begin to consolidate AML and anti-fraud platforms. Firms may also see their governments refine AML and related policies as a result of the latest recommendations of a standards body urging countries to re-assess terrorist funding risks.

As I predicted in previous postings, the cyber-attacks have gotten worse. Earlier this week, “hacktivists” slammed the websites of Nasdaq OMX, Bats Trading, the Chicago Board Options Exchange and Bursa Malaysia, causing outages although trading systems were spared. These latest attacks make clear that financial centers can no longer ignore these threats and that they are unprepared for them.

In theory, we are in bonus season. But it’s looking more like clawback season as banks give bonuses more in line with performance. A case in point is UBS, which for the first time in its history is taking back part of the bonuses slated for its investment bankers, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

My paranoia last month may have been justified. I wrote about the Occupy London protesters wanting to camp out near the London Stock Exchange (LSE) and the cyber-attacks between Israeli and Arab hackers as harbingers of more trouble to come. It looks as if not only was I was right but there needs to be a renewed vigilance to fend off what is likely to be a steady flow of terrorists and hackers targeting financial centers, trading venues and financial services firms.

Rarely am I enthusiastic about bureaucratic standards-building processes. But a recent task force report gives me hope that international support for a system of legal entity identifiers (LEIs) is real and will help bring to fruition a key reform for over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives. Of course, this isn’t the sexy reform that grabs the headlines, but bear with me.