It should shock no one that financial services organizations are a major target for cybercrime. In fact, according to the World Economic Forum, financial organizations are the number 2 target, “accounting for 8.3% of attacks on critical infrastructure since the start of 2023,” (second only to healthcare, accounting for 14.2% of attacks).

CISOs are increasingly implementing strategies to prevent the damaging ripple effect of attacks, turning to solutions like ASPM that use data correlation, automation, and AI to prioritize critical vulnerability fixes and unify remediation efforts amongst myriad security tools detecting security “soft spots.”

Here’s a look at 10 facts and stats security teams at financial organizations need to know.

1. There’s a vision problem in code-to-cloud environments. 77% of financial services organizations admit to having moderate or limited visibility and even scarier—4% claim they have no visibility into their cloud environment at all. ‍
2. The time is now for automation. Nearly three out of four financial organizations have security teams spending over 20% of their time performing manual tasks, according to the CSA 2024 State of Security Remediation report.
3. The risk of huge losses from cyberattacks is only going up. In the past two decades, nearly one-fifth of reported cyber incidents have affected the global financial sector, causing $12 billion in direct losses to financial firms, according to the IMF’s Global Financial Stability Report. Since 2020, direct losses amounted to an estimated $2.5 billion.‍
4. Protracted remediation timelines are slowing you down. Nearly 20% of financial services organizations report taking more than 4 days to address critical vulnerabilities, with 3% exceeding two weeks. ‍
5. Getting to the root cause of vulnerabilities is key. One financial services company took an ASPM approach to Log4j, automatically deduplicating alerts by more than 90%, and reducing thousands of Log4j alerts to just 62 rich-context root causes‍
6. Band aid fixes aren’t the answer. Over half of the vulnerabilities addressed by security teams in financial institutions tend to recur within just a few months of fixing them the first time. ‍
7. The clock’s ticking for ASPM implementation! According to Gartner, 40% of organizations will have an ASPM solution in place by 2026. ‍
8. Cybercriminals attack financial services in a few key ways. Statista says these include “launching DDoS and ransomware attacks at the same time while demanding ransom payment…organizing phishing and business e-mail compromise attacks simultaneously, and using social engineering techniques in fraud attempts. Additionally, the basic web application attacks are aimed mostly at financial institutions.” ‍
9. False positives and duplicate alerts muddy the waters. 65% of financial services organizations consider false positives to be a moderate to significant challenge with 61% feeling similarly about duplicate alerts. ‍
10. Make it easier for security and dev teams to cooperate. 1 in 5 organizations report counterproductive relationships or no collaboration at all between the two groups. ASPM helps facilitate smoother remediation by automatically giving developers prioritized lists of issues with fixes, content, and root causes .

A proactive approach is the strongest approach to safeguarding your organization from the cyber threats looming large for the most highly-targeted industries. ASPM that can ingest data across your code-to-cloud environment, integrate seamlessly with developer tools, app security tools, scanners, and more, and can gather data into one unified view will take you far in the mission of fully closing your risk windows and improve your likelihood to withstand any attack.

For a closer look at this information and specific insights for financial services teams looking to improve their security posture, take a look at the CISO’s Guide to Security Remediation for Financial Services.