Financial Services: Still the No. 1 Target for Cybercriminals

As revealed in the 2018 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, the financial services sector has been the most-targeted industry two years in a row. Over the past year, financial services experienced 27 percent of security incidents and 17 percent of attacks. More than 76 percent of the activity involved injection attacks, while nearly 10 percent involved reconnaissance activity.

Losses due to cybercrime are a growing issue for financial organizations across the globe, and seeing this sector top the chart is not a surprise. Cybercriminals are committing direct monetary theft from bank accounts by using phishing and credential-stealing malware, as well as running malicious code to intercept online transactions. Attacks against the financial sector more commonly target bank customers, but organized crime gangs are also after the enterprise networks of those organizations. Attackers continue to compromise financial institutions by exploiting inadvertent actors’ weaknesses and vulnerabilities in systems and applications.

Read the complete 2018 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index

Security Intelligence Staff

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