Finance organizations can decrease the risk of cyberattacks by deploying secure access service edge (SASE) architecture.
This is because the finance industry has always been an attractive target for cyberattackers. This is especially given the sensitive nature of critical information assets it collects from customers.
After digitalization, the industry has been exposed to various sophisticated cyber threats targeting different levels of business assets in recent years. Cyberattackers targeting the finance industry use ransomware, phishing, denial-of-service (DoS), and other attack vectors to gather information that allows them to acquire funds.
Credit card numbers and personal information such as names, addresses, and social security or license driver’s numbers may be used illegitimately or sold to third parties. This could damage the attacked firms’ reputations as well as the financial situation of their customers.
The finance industry suffered from significant growth in the number of cyberattacks in 2020-2021. Ransomware attacks have increased by over 1,318 percent year over year in the banking industry. The weekly average of cyberattacks in the sector has grown by over 53 percent.
Furthermore, 90 percent of all financial institutions experienced ransomware attacks. The industry is among the top three of the most targeted sectors suffering from such attacks.
Financial services are 1.7 times more likely to be targeted by phishing attacks. In addition to the increased attacks, the average cost of a data breach in the financial sector was 5.72 million dollars in 2021.
Although the industry has become the target of cyberattackers more than ever before, it is possible for finance organizations that embrace hybrid cloud architectures to decrease the risk of attacks by deploying SASE architecture.
Juta Gurinaviciute, the chief technology officer at NordLayer, tells Digital Journal: “A sophisticated cybersecurity approach to repel attacks should combine remote access, network filtering, and segmentation. And it should be cloud-based including SaaS solutions for capacity and organizational resource availability, simplified infrastructure upgrades, zero-trust defined security measures, and activity monitoring.”
Gurinaviciute says SASE improves information security management with interlayered features. SASE provides financial institutions the opportunity to rethink networks and security measures as a whole.
