It should come as no surprise that the financial services industry is one of the most susceptible sectors to cyberattacks. Threat actors and malicious insiders often find banks to be ideal targets against which to conduct potentially lucrative theft and fraud.
In carrying out their activities, cybercriminals take advantage of what drives financial services companies – the trust, integrity, and credibility of their customers. Whether the customers are credit card holders or large organizations with enormous amounts of financial data stored on a bank’s networks, they need to be able to trust in the ability of their financial institutions to protect and safely handle money and information in the most reliable and confidential ways.
Maintaining that trust has never been more challenging, particularly given the ongoing expansion and growing sophistication of cybercrime and cybercriminals. Complicating this challenge is that the entire industry is going through a digital transformation, with financial institutions of all sizes introducing new digital tools and advanced technologies to improve the way they serve their customers. While these innovations have brought forth real benefits, they have also increased the risks by expanding the attack surfaces for threat actors and providing them with new opportunities to strike.
The focus on protecting financial cybersecurity and banking cybersecurity is growing in prevalence, and here’s why.
Social engineering has been on the increase for some time, and it continues to be one of the most dangerous threats to financial services companies. Using sophisticated techniques to trick company employees or customers with phishing emails that get them to surrender access coordinates, download malware, or transfer money to fake accounts continues to be a method of choice for hackers looking to steal money and data.
The financial services industry is implementing new technology solutions such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, and digital services including mobile banking. Meanwhile, the emergence of virtual banks is driving further transformation in IT infrastructure across the industry. All of these increase the security risks for companies and their customers alike.
Are you prepared to manage a cyber attack? Learn more about how Crypsis can help you.
Despite the advanced techniques malicious actors use to infiltrate an organization’s network, far too many digital break-ins are attributed to insider threats from current or recently-departed employees, and even more so to innocuous errors and lapses in judgment by staff. Threat actors employ sophisticated social engineering methods to exploit this human factor, as well as weak links in the digital relationships that financial services companies may have with partners, vendors, or their own customers.
According to a recent report,2 the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic caused a 238% surge in targeted cyber attacks on banks. This spike is not surprising given that cybercriminals seek to line their pockets during times of chaos and uncertainty.
Learn more now about Cybersecurity Attacks on Healthcare Organizations.
Regulators at the state, federal, and international levels have responded to the growth in financial services cyber attacks by implementing new rules for the financial services institutions they supervise. According to industry data, in the United States alone, more than 30 cybersecurity regulations have been released since 2014.3
As a proactive measure to assess your company’s cyber defenses, Crypsis experts can conduct a Breach Readiness Review, which quantifies your organization’s ability to identify and respond to cyberattacks, from ransomware to denial-of-service to malicious insider threats. The review process flags any security gaps that need to be addressed immediately while leaving you with a set of specific, actionable recommendations to maintain a higher level cyber defense posture and be ready to respond quickly and effectively to any future intrusion attempts.
Protection starts with initiating safeguards and implementing continuous monitoring capabilities to ensure the delivery of critical infrastructure services. Examples include identifying management and access control, conducting cyber risk awareness training for employees, and implementing information protection processes and procedures. This involves monitoring financial services cybersecurity developments and events to verify the effectiveness of protective measures.
Crypsis offers targeted assessments and technical cybersecurity services to test and evaluate cybersecurity posture and overall cyber resilience, and to verify that security controls are performing optimally and efficiently. These include penetration testing – where we simulate a real-world attack to assess the strength of your countermeasures and identify hidden vulnerabilities – web and mobile application testing, targeted security assessments of your current configurations, phishing exercises, and tabletop exercises that cover customized scenarios based on threats specific to the financial services industry.
The Crypsis Group’s data breach and response teams are ready at a moment’s notice to help financial services organizations investigate, eradicate, and recover from ransomware attacks, as well as from business email compromise, inadvertent disclosures of data, and any other type of incident. Our mission is to immediately stop the attack, expel the intruder, restore systems, and get operations back online as quickly as possible, minimizing downtime – while leveraging data analytics solutions to investigate the extent of exposure and relevant regulatory obligations.
Crypsis can help reconfigure work processes and security procedures to narrow the opportunities for threat actors to deceive and exploit your company’s employees, partners, vendors, and customers. Our experts can also create and implement employee training programs on how to recognize and avoid financial services cyber attacks.
Our financial services cybersecurity experts have deep experience protecting our nation and our businesses from ever-evolving and intensifying cyber threats. Since we were founded in 2015, we have partnered with hundreds of financial services companies – including banks, credit card companies, investment firms, and wealth managers – to help them respond to and recover from cyberattacks, manage their risks, and harden their defenses.
We fight cybercrime. With many of us having served in law enforcement, the intelligence community, and in the IT security departments of leading corporations and government agencies, we know how cyber criminals operate, we know the tactics they use, we know where to look for them, and we know how to find them. With access to the latest technologies and techniques for fighting cybercriminals, we dedicate our careers to staying well ahead of attackers and keeping them at bay on behalf of our clients.
1 https://www.bcg.com/press/20june2019-global-wealth-report
2 https://www.zdnet.com/article/covid-19-blamed-for-238-surge-in-cyberattacks-against-banks/
3 https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Testimony-Feeney-2017-06-21.pdf
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