The cybersecurity landscape in financial services is highly complex, marked by an overwhelming array of overlapping regulations, persistent threats, and understaffed teams struggling to keep pace. Even with substantial investments and focus on security, many organizations remain vulnerable to advanced persistent threats, fraud, sophisticated phishing attacks, and other aggressive attempts to access the personally identifiable information (PII) and sensitive intellectual property they hold.
Cyberattacks Are at a Record High — and Won’t Lessen Any Time Soon
Threat actors are emboldened in times of chaos. Their tenacious tactics — and frequent successes — rise in concert with geopolitical, social, and environmental upheaval. 2021 was a particularly devastating year in terms of cyberattacks, and the financial services industry was hit hard. The rapid information digitization in the industry and ability of threat groups to avoid discovery and penalty have enabled seemingly unchecked advances. State-sponsored hacking campaigns have increased globally, making it difficult for many governments to curtail phishing attacks and ransomware sanctioned at the highest levels by rogue nations. The scourge isn’t expected to abate in the coming months.
FS-ISAC, the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center, announced in its Navigating Cyber 2022 Report that the top threats this year are expected to be third-party attacks, zero-day vulnerability exploits, and ransomware. Organizations need to further efforts to harden security now to protect their businesses and their customers.
Business Email Compromise, Fraud and Ransomware Attacks Delivered Through Phishing
Phishing attacks against financial institutions have surged in both volume and sophistication. According to Fortra Brand Protection research, 33.8% of all phishing attacks in Q1 2021 targeted financial institutions—a number that skyrocketed to 61.3% by Q4. These aren’t the clumsy scams of the past; today’s phishing campaigns often feature convincing designs and carefully crafted messaging, making them nearly indistinguishable from legitimate communication. As a result, employees are increasingly vulnerable to deception—especially in targeted business email compromise (BEC) attacks, where cybercriminals impersonate executives to manipulate staff into wiring funds or disclosing sensitive financial data.
Phishing doesn’t just steal data; it can also open the door to ransomware—malicious software that encrypts or locks critical systems until a ransom is paid. Just one click on a corrupted link or attachment can unleash chaos across a network. For financial services firms, where system uptime and immediate access to funds are non-negotiable, the impact can be catastrophic. To better protect against BEC, check out this article.
Maintaining Compliance with Strict Regulations
GDPR, CCPA, SOX, GLBA, FINRA, PCI DSS — the financial services industry is no stranger to the alphabet soup of regulatory requirements governing all aspects of how sensitive data is stored, shared, processed, and destroyed. These details must be understood and addressed to comply with restrictions for data residency, sovereignty, and localization. Compliance can present a significant burden to understaffed IT and InfoSec teams as they walk a fine tightrope to balance acceptable risk and business convenience.
As the global workforce gap is around 2.72 million security professionals, it’s often a significant effort not only to maintain compliant practices, but also to monitor and document ongoing adherence. Additionally, staying up on the changes to the fine print of regulations can also pose a challenge. Of note, the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) recently implemented PCI Data Security Standard 4.0 to address emerging threats to the high-value account information PCI DSS safeguards.
Cloud and Online Services Add Fuel to the Cyber-Attack Fire
Like many organizations, financial services organizations have embraced the trend of digital transformation and looked to the cloud and/or managed service providers (MSPs) to augment their capabilities. Mission-critical workloads and data now reside in the cloud to support geographically dispersed workforces and customers as well as access to this information via smartphone apps and mobile devices. As such, the traditional on-premises security perimeter has disappeared.
While the fast provisioning, 24/7 IT resources, and impressive uptime of the cloud offer notable benefits for financial services enterprises, reliance on hybrid or full cloud infrastructure can inject another layer of complexity when it comes to security. Teams need to fully understand their contract with cloud providers and MSPs to scope out responsibilities and security practices—and avoid surprises.
Resilience Is Needed Throughout the Supply Chain
Not all financial services organizations thoroughly understand how their partners handle security. This is a dangerous oversight, as an attack on a third-party provider can have a ripple effect throughout the industry, particularly for shared services. Ensure your supply chain partners take the right security steps to protect themselves as well as your business in a way that meets applicable compliance mandates and can ensure business continuity.
Prioritizing and Managing Cybersecurity Risk in Financial Services
Given the complexity of this high stakes' environment, the next logical question for CISOs and their teams is “How can we manage our risk?” Fortra works with leading financial services organizations to assess the efficacy of existing efforts and identify vulnerabilities and areas of improvement. There are three key solution spheres to consider when working to enhance your level of visibility, control, and protection.
- Identify and manage the vulnerabilities Modernizing your approach to vulnerability detection and management hinges on maximizing automation and achieving efficiency in the tools you use. Performing host discovery and vulnerability scans of external (internet facing) and internal IP-based systems and networks is an excellent start. Monitoring security risk scores is another valuable tactic. Learn more about Fortra Vulnerability Management
- Discover and secure valuable data You know you have sensitive data stored on computers, cloud and on-premises servers, mobile devices, and more. But it must be classified before it can be protected properly. To do this, you’ll have to determine where data is stored, how it’s used, and where it flows. This includes identifying both structured and unstructured data. Learn more about Fortra Data Protection
- Collaborate securely and compliantly Working with internal employees and external stakeholders including customers, partners, and third-party business associates requires strict attention to how data and files are shared. Safeguarding financial file transfers using secure managed file transfer (MFT) gives you full control and audit capabilities over how sensitive PII moves and who can access it. Learn more about Fortra secure managed file transfer
Staying Positive in an Uncertain Landscape
Cyberattacks have evolved into powerful weapons designed to intimidate, disrupt, and erode trust. For financial services security teams, the constant state of high alert takes its toll, leading to fatigue and desensitization.
At Fortra, we understand these pressures. That’s why we’re committed to innovating new ways to detect and stop global threat actors before they cause harm. Our solutions are built to safeguard your most sensitive data — so you can stay focused on what matters most: trust, continuity, and security.