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Top FinServ Cybersecurity Risks

Published on April 19, 2023 by Casey Shields

Categories: Enterprise IT, Finance, Information Security

In 2023, cybersecurity has become one of the most critical issues for financial services organizations that handle huge volumes of sensitive customer information. 

This exchange of sensitive content makes financial firms a prime target for cybercriminals and rogue nation-states. To protect against these threats, financial institutions must invest in robust governance, compliance, and cybersecurity measures as well as ensure they have a comprehensive cybersecurity risk management strategy in place.

5 Shocking Financial Services Cybercrime Stats  

  1. The average data breach cost in financial services is $5.72 million per incident. (IBM)
  2. Financial services spends more than any other industry fighting cyberattacks. (Accenture)
  3. Financial services organizations have 449,855 exposed sensitive files and 36,004 open to everyone in the organization. This is the highest when comparing industries. (Varonis)
  4. 74% of financial sector security leaders experienced one or more ransomware attacks. 63% of those victims paid the ransom. (VMware)
  5. On average, 270 attacks (entailing unauthorized access of data, applications, networks, or devices) occurred in financial services, an increase of 31% compared with the prior year. (Accenture)

Cost of Financial Services Cyberattacks  

  • $5.2 billion worth of bitcoin transactions are estimated to be tied to ransomware payouts. (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network) 
  • 7 out of 10 financial institutions aren’t spending more than 12% of their overall IT budget on security. Most financial institutions, however, planned to increase their budget by 20% to 30% last year. (VMware) 
  • 22.5% of financial firms listed unifying management, tracking policies, and reporting as their top priority around third-party sensitive content communications. (Kiteworks) 

The Highest Cybercrime Risks in Financial Services 

When it comes to cyberattacks on financial institutions, the following are some of what we expect to see a great deal of in 2023: 

  • Ransomware attacks occur when cybercriminals or nation-states encrypt an organization’s data or hijack applications and demand payment to unlock them.
  • Phishing attacks are when cybercriminals and rogue nation-states send fake emails or messages that appear to be from legitimate sources in order to trick victims into divulging sensitive information and/or login credentials.
  • Malware attacks occur when malicious software is installed on a device or network to gain access to sensitive data or disrupt operations.
  • Denial-of-service (DoS) attacks are the result of cyber attackers overloading a system or network with traffic to make it unavailable to legitimate users.
  • Insider threats result when an employee or contractor with access to sensitive data exposes that data to unauthorized individuals.

How to Better Protect Your Company from Cyber Attacks

Here are just a few best practices to help protect against cyberattacks: 

  1. Build a security culture with cyber user awareness and simulated phishing messages.
  2. Implement a Strong Password Management Policy.
  3. Be prepared for a cyber-attack with system optimization and network hardening.

You can read more about them in our blog post at Nine Cybersecurity Measures to Protect Your Organization.  

Have questions or want to learn more?  

We are constantly developing new and innovative ways to protect companies of all sizes and keep them ahead of cyber attackers. Contact us to learn more.