Financial Institutions Are Suffering From Increasingly Sophisticated Cyberattacks, According to Contrast Security

Authored by Contrast’s Senior Vice President of Cyber Strategy Tom Kellermann, the report is a warning to global financial institutions (FIs) that security must be a top-of-mind issue amid rising geopolitical tensions, increased destructive attacks utilizing wipers and a record-breaking year of zero-day exploits. Financial sector security leaders from around the world – in a series of interviews – revealed specific trends when it comes to notable cyberattacks, e-fraud and cyber defense. Some of the most eye-opening results from the report include:

• 60% were victimized by destructive attacks
• 64% saw an increase in application attacks, while 50% experienced attacks against their APIs
• 48% experienced an increase in wire transfer fraud
• 50% have detected campaigns to steal non-public market information
• 54% of the banks were most concerned with the cyber threat posed by Russia
• 72% plan to invest more in application security in 2023

“The increase of online threats, phishing, ransomware attacks, account takeovers and business email compromises impacting the financial sector is growing every day and we can see in real-time the damage this is doing to the longevity of businesses and the impact it’s having on our economy,” said Derek Booth, Assistant to the Special-Agent-in-Charge, U.S. Secret Service and Head of the Mountain West Cyber Fraud Task Force. “I applaud Tom Kellermann for speaking with some of the most influential people within the sector to determine solutions that can better protect FIs against vulnerabilities in banks and methods of commerce through industry-wide transparency.”

“The complexity of securing financial digital systems and the need to develop new ways to guard against sophisticated cyberattacks has increased exponentially in the last year. In response, FIs are fighting to evolve and create more effective prevention, detection and response to these damaging attacks,” said…