Financial services firms are getting better at stopping cyberattacks, but the evolution of cyberattack technology may be outpacing the investment in defenses against those threats, according to a new research study from Accenture.
In a survey of 4,600 enterprise security professionals — 821 of whom worked in financial services companies — the global consulting firm found that even though the volume of cyberattacks has doubled, financial services firms managed to stop 81% of them last year, compared to just 66% in 2016.
Industry executives felt good about their protection efforts, for the most part — 81% said they felt "confidence" or "extreme confidence" in their security protocols, according to Accenture. But that confidence may be overblown, the study suggested.
"While more breach attempts were thwarted, over 40% of breaches, on average, went undetected for more than a week, and another 9% went undetected for more than one month," Accenture noted. "This suggests that executives may be overconfident in their security capabilities — given that it's critical to identify a breach in days, if not hours, to contain the damage."
Part of the problem may be that many financial services providers aren't requiring their business partners to fulfill same expectations they have of themselves when it comes to cyberdefense.
According to the study, 37% of financial services executives said they hold their partners to lower cybersecurity standards than they do their own organizations.
Another issue may be investment. Even though 83% of the executives said artificial intelligence, machine learning and other cutting-edge technologies were necessary to ensure security in their organizations, the study found that just two out of five financial services firms were actually investing in those technologies for cyberdefense.
Only 18% said they had at least doubled their cybersecurity spending over the past three years, and 30% planned to do so in the next three years.
"Financial services firms are converging to a level of mastery when it comes to the security status quo, including their cyber resilience and response readiness," said Chris Thompson, who is a global security and resilience lead for financial services at Accenture Security. "But as business technology evolves, so too must cybersecurity. The new technologies that banks and insurers are embracing —including cloud, microservices, application programing interfaces, edge computing and blockchain — will create new security risks, especially as cyberattacks evolve in sophistication."
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