Financial services companies have access to some of the most valuable information contained on the world wide web. Not only do these institutions maintain a collection of each customer’s and employee’s most sensitive personal data - social security numbers and other personally identifying information - they also act as the virtual bank vaults for every market-operational individual, company, and nation to date. It should come as no surprise that for outsiders interested in hacking their way into a company, the prospect of virtually breaking into a financial services company is quite reasonably, the most alluring. Hackers making their way into the sensitive data of financial service providers are the modern day bank robbers.

In a report entitled, 2018 Cost of a Data Breach Study: Global Overview, an IBM-sponsored global research center, The Ponemon Institute, published the finding that out of the 477 sample data breaches studied for the report, 77 of these cyber attacks had occurred on companies in the financial services sector. This research shows that of all of the industries studied, financial services has received the most hits. Further increasing risk for these companies, entities in the Financial Services sector sit nearly at the top of the list as the industry whose businesses stand with the most to lose in the case of a breach; the study reveals that companies within the Financial Services sector average a cost of $206 per capita loss from a data breach. While this study gives a solid overview of risk to the industry by using sample pools, only by bringing in other research can we paint a fuller picture in order to see the exact types and mass of threats common to businesses in this particular field. Using information from Verizon’s 2018 study which breaks down cyber incidents and breaches by industry, we can see that banking trojan botnets and denial of service are the most frequent form of attack to the industry. Additionally, we are confronted with the startling realization that there had been almost 40,000 attacks through banking Trojan botnets alone to financial services businesses. With so many points of access now visible in the industry, it can seem overwhelming to make comprehensive decisions on how best to prioritize initiatives and assess risk without considerable help.

Instituting more sophisticated cyber risk management programs is not only critical, it is marketable. Using Maxxsure's M-Score, a comprehensive cyber risk quantification, to make data-driven decisions on how to manage your program allows your company to stand out in an industry highly susceptible to loss due to damaged reputation. The easy-to-understand and consistently analyzed data made available through Maxxsure helps your leading executives to guide the entire company in a Risk-Aware lifestyle with facility so that they can focus their energies and expertise on growth.