The financial services industry is a lucrative target for motivated criminals. Storing, transferring, and processing valuable data - along with the resources to pay hefty sums for ransoms – put a mark on a vital piece of the world’s critical infrastructure.
What you need to know:
- Financial services continue to be a high-value target for advanced cyberattacks, including attacks by nation-state threat actors.
- Malicious and negligent insiders threaten data security.
- Most financial institutions experienced an increase in attacks in 2022.
- There was a significant increase in web application and API attacks against financial services providers.
Cybercriminals operate like any other business—they focus on maximizing efficiency and profitability. Access to valuable and sensitive data, and the resources to pay hefty sums for ransoms, make financial services institutions a lucrative target for motivated threat actors.
These facts—along with the growth in demand for anywhere access to financial information and considerable regulatory changes in financial services environments—underscore the need for secure networks and infrastructure.
Common Attack Vectors
Cybercriminals are increasingly exploiting IT blind spots and network and software vulnerabilities to gain access to valuable information, looking for easy targets and a significant return on their investment.
Let’s take look at common attack vectors used to breach financial services firms:
Social Engineering tactics are used by attackers on unwary users who upload, download, receive, open, and edit many types of files every day.
Insider threats account for a significant number of breaches. Malicious insiders attempt to download information and negligent insiders accidentally leak information.
Nation-state sponsored attacks continue to utilize security weaknesses for espionage, to disrupt and destabilize the economy, or to exploit strategic financial intelligence.
Web portals, applications, and productivity files pose significant risks. Malicious code, macros, hyperlinks, and more can be concealed in common files necessary for day-to-day operations.
Each financial services organization has different workflows and unique security needs. When designing a cyber threat protection strategy, there are many controls you can put in place to mitigate risks.
Download our white paper to learn more about how financial services organizations can protect client financial data by inspecting documents for malware while reducing a common vector used by attackers to exploit zero-day vulnerabilities.
How OPSWAT Can Help
OPSWAT is committed to preventing threats and zero-day attacks for secure data transfer across your network, applications, and customer operations. With almost two decades of experience in securing critical infrastructure systems, OPSWAT offers technologies that integrate advanced malware protection and detection into your IT solutions and applications. OPSWAT MetaDefender – our advanced threat prevention solution for file upload security, secure storage, email security, cross-domain solutions, and malware analysis is used by financial institutions that require even the highest level of security.
For more information, please contact one of our cybersecurity experts.
