Ransomware Now Considered a “Crisis” in the Financial Services Sector

Stu Sjouwerman | Sep 28, 2023

Ransomware Now Considered a “Crisis” in the Financial Services SectorA recent panel discussion of banking CISOs and experts at the SIBOS conference focused on the current state of ransomware and what institutions should do to protect themselves.

Each year, SWIFT – the global provider of messaging solutions for banking and payments – puts on their SIBOS conference, where business and technology executives from financial institutions around the world gather to understand the state of the financial services industry. A panel discussion at that conference entitled “Ransomware on the Rise” began with the question of whether ransomware was a crisis or not.

“Do I think there is a crisis? Absolutely," said Robert Boyce, Global Cyber Resilience Lead at Accenture

This crisis exists because of three factors:

  • The resurgence of targeting critical infrastructure, including financial services
  • The move away from encryption to just data theft and extortion
  • Threat actors are leveraging best of breed services and products from within the cybercrime ecosystem that make attacks faster and more successful

Recommendations to address the threat of ransomware included a lengthy discussion around planning and testing, as well as assessing the security of your supply chain, and implementing layers of security controls – which we believe should include security awareness training to help reduce the likelihood that phishing and social engineering attacks aiding in the initial attack on an institution are successful.

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