Finance

Because of the vast amount of critical cyber data financial institutions hold, the regulating bodies are constantly on guard to ensure that all accredited businesses are protected and compliant. The threats to financial environments are ever-changing and growing, and it is imperative for banks to comply with the numerous controls and regulations. Failure to comply with the constantly changing and increasing demands of the regulators may entail hard-to-recover reputational and commercial damages.

Phishing attacks involve the attacker sending an email or text message that appears to be from a credible source, such as a bank or credit card company. The email or text message often contains a highly convincing link that, when clicked, will take the victim to a fake website that looks like a legitimate page. The fake website will then capture confidential information for the attacker to steal. Chances are you or at least one of your acquaintances have previously received a phishing invitation. Especially common in the financial industry, Phishing is one of the most successful cyber attacks.

Insider threats are a growing concern for financial institutions. These threats are carried out by people with authorized access, such as employees and contractors with access to sensitive data. Adding to the complexity of these threats is that these individuals may attack intentionally or unintentionally.

Banks are a highly rewarding target for cybercrime. Cybercriminals are on a mission to develop several ways to penetrate the bank’s cyber data repositories. The following are prevalent technical breaches that financial companies need to be safeguarded from:

• Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) involve repeated, targeted attacks designed to gain unauthorized access to sensitive information. These attacks aim to remain undetected for an extended period so they can effectively disrupt operations and steal confidential data.
• Malware is software that is designed to harm a computer system. Malware is commonly installed on a system, followed by an APT or Phishing. Once the malware penetrates an environment, it can swipe data and launch destructive attacks.
• Distributed Denial-of-service (DDoS) attack is also one of the damaging breaches that cybercriminals use to make a machine or resource unavailable to its users by flooding the network with traffic. This results in disrupted websites and several online banking services.