Why is the Financial Services sector so heavily targeted?
Cybercriminals follow the money, and banks and financial institutions have more money than most organisations making them a very lucrative and attractive target.
Despite financial institutions investing heavily in strengthening their cyber security defences, today’s cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated in their attack methods. They have a thorough understanding of the inner workings of the banking system and are quick to exploit any possible vulnerabilities to launch an attack.
As has proved the case in many other industries, one of the easiest ways for attackers to bypass traditional security measures is to exploit the human factor, and target an organisation’s employees. Criminals will use a range of social engineering tactics to infiltrate an organisation’s security systems, and phishing remains the most popular and effective way to do this.
In research conducted by Positive Technologies, employees at 75% of banks had clicked on links in phishing messages, and in 25% of banks, at least one employee ran a malicious attachment on their computer.
