The National Security Agency and the FBI have begun cooperating with financial institutions to prevent positional cyberattacks of the sort we’ve been covering lately, including the recent theft of classified nuclear plant information from Japanese defense contractor Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. There’s still a heavy fog around the details of such talks between banks and government officials, but NSA Director Keith Alexander warned about the worst case scenario in a Reuters exclusive.

“Alexander said industry and government were making progress in protecting computer networks, but “tremendous vulnerabilities” remained. The four-star Army general noted companies that have suffered damage from hackers, such as Google Inc, Lockheed Martin Corp and Nasdaq OMX Group, had among the best security systems in the world.”

The risk of hackers infiltrating into financial firms’ networks is a naturally a serious one, considering that the altering or foreign retrieval of sensitive financial data can have major implications on global markets.

Director Alexander didn’t mention with which banks his agency is working with, but the basic concept is that the NSA would share a part of its database on malicious software with the said organizations. The agency is already working with NASDAQ on a similar initiative, which was kicked off after hackers infiltrated the stock market’s network earlier this year.

Financial firms are looking out for means to defend their data from hackers in light of a series of increasingly sophisticated attacks that has been uncovered in the past few months. However, so far it seems that the attackers’ interest was directed mainly towards defense contractors and governmental agencies.  The latest development comes from the Japanese parliament, which has been hit by a spear-phishing attack that has been traced back to a server in China. Experts have suggested the nation is the source of several other cyberattacks recently.