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Financial firms attacked 300x more often than others

Staff Writer
By Staff Writer, ITWeb
Johannesburg, 25 Jun 2019

Cyber criminals target the US financial services industry one billion times a year, or 2 000 times a day on average per financial services firm.

This was revealed by Morphisec in its 2019 Consumer Financial Cybersecurity Threat Index report, which surveyed 1 000 consumers in the US to examine how the increasing number of financial cyber attacks is impacting their mindset.

According to the report, the financial services industry is targeted 300 times more frequently than organisations in other sectors. In addition, other Morphisec research revealed that banking Trojans make up a quarter of all attacks.

Highlights from the 2019 Morphisec Consumer Financial Cybersecurity Threat Index include:

  • Consumers believe cyber attacks on financial institutions is currently the second biggest threat to the US financial system, second only to the threat they feel is posed by Trump’s escalating trade wars.
  • 65% of customers say their financial services providers don’t invest enough in cyber security to protect their assets.
  • Consumers believe employee error and malware pose the biggest risks to their financial data.
  • 57% of customers say trust in financial services providers’ cyber defences impacts the likelihood of their doing business with them.
  • However, despite their concerns, more than half of consumers admit they don’t use strong passwords to protect their financial accounts.

Andrew Homer, VP of Security Strategy at Morphisec, says with financial institutions facing an ever-increasing risk from advanced, evasive threats that are continually targeting their security controls, customers are justified in worrying about how much their financial services providers are investing in protecting their financial data and accounts.

“Effectively training employees on common threats and investing in innovative cyber security technologies will ultimately help mitigate the risk of sophisticated attacks and win back consumer trust,” he says.

Morphisec says it has revolutionised endpoint protection with its patented Moving Target Defense technology, which `prevents threats others can’t, including APTs, zero-days, ransomware, evasive fileless attacks and Web-borne exploits’.

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