The business challenges facing organizations of all sizes, across all industries, are substantial in our digitally-driven world – especially for the financial services sector. From attracting and retaining customers or members for life to keeping pace in today's competitive market, it can feel like hand-to-hand combat to innovate against financial fraud and identity theft. Fraudsters and cybercriminals are working tirelessly to hack networks and systems in order to compromise consumers' account holder information.

Consumers expect products and services to be available upon swipe, and banking is no exception. In fact, a 2018 Citi Mobile Banking Study revealed mobile banking is one of the top three most popular and widely-used apps by Americans – in line with the soaring popularity of social media and weather apps. As mobile and online banking continue to be in-demand, financial institutions are pressured to meet, and even exceed, the demands of account holders. This has in turn correlated to a rise in cybercrime targeting financial institutions. As banks and credit unions have more data to manage, and are transmitting across more devices, it's not difficult to see why they have remained so highly targeted by fraudsters. In fact, research from the Identity Theft Resource Center found that financial services firms fall victim to cybersecurity attacks 300 times more frequently than businesses in other industries.

An Erosion of Trust

Despite the overall number of data breaches dipping in 2018, the number of records compromised grew to 126%, according to the ITRC. Larger quantities of data resulting from a smaller number of breaches signals that hackers are becoming more effective and methodical in their cyberattacks. This improved efficiency is an eye-opening proposition for organizations that are responsible for securing large amounts of sensitive information – especially when you consider that the average cost of a data breach is $7.91 million for companies in the U.S., as reported by Ponemon Institute in the "2018 Cost of a Data Breach" study.