As financial institutions increase their reliance on technology, they face a greater risk of cyberattacks, viruses and security breaches. The repercussions from such events can have many adverse effects on your business, including financial loss, penalties, privacy injury, negative publicity and legal costs, to name a few.

Financial institutions are especially vulnerable
According to a 2016 Ponemon Institute Cost of Data Breach, the financial services sector remains one of the top three most affected industries with respect to security incidents, denial-of-service attacks, web application attacks, physical theft and insider misuse. In addition, the financial services industry suffers from the third largest breach cost per capita, with an average cost of $264 per record breached. The average financial impact upon companies related security exploits and data breaches is $13.1M.

The most common type of security exploit is negligence or mistakes that resulted in the loss of confidential information. The second most common is a cyberattack that resulted in the theft of consumer information.

What can you do to protect your business?
Although it may be impossible to completely safeguard your business from vulnerability to an attack, there are recommended strategies that you can implement immediately to help reduce your risk. The following three tips may help to reduce security incident severity and frequency:
 

• Training your employees on security awareness on a routine basis
   
• Securing embedded devices
   
• Implementing strong password management practices – infiltration of weak passwords represents a common method by which attackers obtain access a network and exfiltrate data
   

Your greatest asset can be your best defense
Your employees are not only one of your greatest assets, but they frequently serve as your front line of defense against cyberattacks. Ongoing training exercises, occurring multiple times a year, can help ensure that your employees are aware of common and newly recognized attacks, how to report a potential security incident, as well as how to maintain physical custody and control of company assets.

To learn more about what risks financial institutions face and how to safeguard your business, please review our  Defending Financial Institutions from Cyber Attacks white paper.