The finance industry has always been an attractive target for cyberattackers, especially given the sensitive nature of critical information assets it collects from customers. After digitalization, the industry has been exposed to various sophisticated cyber threats targeting different levels of business assets in recent years.

Cyberattackers targeting the finance industry use ransomware, phishing, DDoS, and other attack vectors to gather information that allows them to acquire funds. Credit card numbers and personal information such as names, addresses, and social security or license driver’s numbers may be used illegitimately or sold to third parties. This could damage the attacked firms’ reputations as well as the financial situation of their customers.

The data breach cost 5.72 million dollars

The finance industry suffered from significant growth in the number of cyberattacks in 2020-2021. Ransomware attacks have increased by over 1,318% year over year in the banking industry. The weekly average of cyberattacks in the sector has grown by over 53%. Furthermore, 90% of all financial institutions experienced ransomware attacks. The industry is among the top three of the most targeted sectors in DDoS attacks. Financial services are 1.7 times more likely to be targeted by phishing attacks. In addition to the increased attacks, the average cost of a data breach in the financial sector was 5.72 million dollars in 2021.

Although the industry has become the target of cyberattackers more than ever before, it is possible for finance organizations that embrace hybrid cloud architectures to decrease the risk of attacks by deploying SASE architecture. Juta Gurinaviciute, the chief technology officer at NordLayer, says, “A sophisticated cybersecurity approach to repel attacks should combine remote access, network filtering, and segmentation. And it should be cloud-based including SaaS solutions for capacity and organizational resource availability, simplified infrastructure upgrades, zero-trust defined security measures, and activity monitoring.”

She adds “A SASE-based organization cybersecurity strategy having all these measures is a solid and holistic solution for protecting data. It also improves information security management with interlayered features. SASE provides financial institutions the opportunity to rethink networks and security measures as a whole. It meets the finance industry’s increasing security needs by offering uniform security based on principles set once and applied across all sites, server centers, multi-cloud environments, and offices.”

A cloud-based SASE platform can also help a financial company integrate risk data and assessments to create a risk indicator list, ensuring that the firm is aware of potential cyber threats and how to mitigate them. “Starting with SASE deployments today can be a strategic component that can be leveraged in the future for the further digital transformation of financial firms,” says Gurinaviciute. “The finance companies that use cloud-based SASE platforms have a better opportunity to be more proactive in choosing a security solution that can protect their business. Then they can scale up or down to meet whatever demands are placed on it.”

ABOUT NORDLAYER

NordLayer is an adaptive network access security solution for modern businesses. It helps organizations of all sizes to fulfill scaling and integration challenges. Moving towards an ever-evolving SASE ecosystem, NordLayer is quick and easy to implement with existing infrastructure, is hardware free, and is designed for scaling. As a cloud-native solution with an easy-to-use interface, NordLayer offers protection to businesses of any size, complexity, or work model, including remote or hybrid workplaces. More information: www.nordlayer.com