Each day, endless amounts of highly sensitive information move between financial institutions, markets, and clients on the web. With trillions of dollars being exchanged daily, cybercriminals have plenty of opportunities to siphon or steal huge sums of money before disappearing back into anonymity. According to global telecoms group BT, those opportunities can exceed more than 46mn signals of potential cyberattacks per day, worldwide—most of which target banking entities.
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Money attracts hackers to financial institutions more than any other industry—often with devastating results.
The percentage of financial organizations worldwide that reported experiencing a ransomware attack in 2023.
The percentage of cyber attacks on financial organizations worldwide attributed to malware in 2023.
The average number of daily transactions between financial service providers, business partners, and customers that could be vulnerable to hackers.
The estimated average direct cost globally for businesses to recover from a data breach or cyber attack.
1 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1460896/rate-ransomware-attacks-global/
2 https://www.statista.com/statistics/1323911/cyber-attacks-on-financial-organizations-worldwide-by-type/
3 https://www.frbservices.org/resources/financial-services/wires/volume-value-stats/monthly-stats.html
4 https://www.ibm.com/reports/data-breach
No surprise here: money is the primary target for most hacking attempts in the financial sector. Cybercriminals use various methods to seize funds from your digital vaults and into their pockets.
Here are some of the main reasons cybersecurity is of critical importance for Finance.
Unfortunately, it’s not uncommon for educational institutions to have limited budgets and resources allocated to in-house cybersecurity measures. This often makes them softer targets—especially when compared to large businesses and corporations—because they tend to have weaker defenses and outdated systems that are much easier to exploit.
Most schools and colleges have a distributed IT environment with many endpoints (i.e., computers in classrooms, administrative offices, libraries, and personal devices), making it challenging to fully secure every device and network. The shift to remote learning during the COVID-19 pandemic has increased the use of online platforms and tools even more, creating more opportunities for cyberattacks.
Put simply, cybercriminals typically seek out the easiest targets with the highest potential yield of results. Higher education and K-12 school districts possess tons of student and employee information cyberattackers find valuable, including personal information, addresses and phone numbers, financial information, and in some cases, health info. Hackers can then sell off the information to others who may want to use school data to locate, harass, or even dox parents, students, and faculty.
Regulatory bodies place strict regulation requirements on financial organizations, such as the PCI DSS regulation to protect cardholder information. Financial cybersecurity solutions work to ensure that banks and financial institutions follow regulations and industry standards, which will also dramatically reduce the chance of unintentional non-compliance
The very nature of business makes financial institutions a massive target for motivated attackers. Cybercriminals aim to drain money directly from hacked accounts or use stolen credit card information to make fraudulent charges. Add to that the potential costs of paying ransom on a ransomware attack—often totaling several million dollars—fines from regulatory bodies, and loss of clients or customers, and the costs can be catastrophic. By implementing robust cybersecurity processes and powerful cyber protection software, financial institutions can shield themselves from significant losses.
Huntress Managed Endpoint Detection & Response (EDR) takes on the load of cybersecurity responsibilities for banks and financial institutions by proactively identifying and thwarting potential attackers. Our dedicated 24/7 Security Operations Center (SOC) delivers continuous managed detection and response against malicious activities that spring up. But that’s just one aspect of a comprehensive security approach—employees should also receive specialized Security Awareness Training (SAT), empowering them to recognize and report cyber threats like phishing attempts and scams promptly.
Fintech is a mashup of the words "financial" and "technology", which is technology devoted to streamlining and improving digital financial services. It combines finance and cybersecurity to keep transactions and information secure and incident-free. Fintech security works in the background to prevent data leaks, keep intruders out, and maintain data integrity.
It’s simple: cybercriminals and hacker collectives target the financial sector because it's where the money and valuable information are. Banks and financial companies store a lot of personal and financial data, like bank account details and credit card information. This makes them attractive to hackers who want to steal identities, commit fraud, or take money illegally. Plus, with more people using online banking and digital transactions, there are more ways for hackers to get in and wreak havoc. When hackers succeed, they can make huge sums of money by demanding ransom, selling stolen data, or directly taking funds.
Despite efforts to protect against these attacks, hackers keep trying because the potential rewards are so high and the services banks provide will always remain essential. Reliable cyber protection can help reduce millions in potential financial losses, including direct virtual theft, recovery costs, and non-compliance fines by regulatory authorities.
In banking, cybersecurity is a collection of strategies, processes, and practices that operate to protect physical technology assets, financial assets, and critical data from unauthorized access. These cybersecurity practices also include backups and monitoring data to make sure digital information remains safe and accurate
The responsibility ultimately falls on banks to ensure the safety and security of their infrastructure and data. Failing to do so can result in substantial financial losses in the aftermath of a cyberattack. It's also the responsibility of banks to immediately notify their primary regulatory agency in the event of a data breach or any other impactful cyber incident.
The most common cyberattack on banks is phishing. This involves tricking people into giving away their sensitive information, like passwords or credit card numbers, through fake emails or websites that look legitimate. Hackers use this stolen information to access accounts or steal money. Apart from phishing, banks are often targeted by ransomware attacks where hackers encrypt the bank’s data and demand large payments for decryption. Banks can also face distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks that overload their networks and disrupt services.
Banks, merchants, and payment processors typically suffer the worst impact from these attacks. Banks usually absorb the losses and compensate customers who are victims of cyber incidents targeting the bank and its clients.
Between 2004 and 2023, financial institutions have been victims of over 20,000 cyber attacks. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) estimates that these attacks cost more than $12B in direct losses. These losses don't include indirect costs, such as compensating consumers, reinforcing cybersecurity, and customers’ lost trust in the institution.
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