Criminals follow the money, making financial services firms a top target for cyberattacks. Financial services firms fall victim to cyberattacks roughly one billion times per year, according to Forbes, which is approximately 2,000 attacks per minute or over 30 attacks per second, costing each firm approximately $18 million.

Additionally, as reported by ITSP Magazine:

• The average data breach cost for financial institutions rose 5% to $7 million per breach in 2017.
• The average cost to the financial industry per record, lost or stolen, during a breach was $336, compared to cost per record of U.S. businesses of $225.

What's happening? There have been changes in the threat landscape including a reduced amount of time between the emergence of the vulnerability to the attack, lower costs to launch an attack, easier methods to monetize attacks and declining sophistication required to launch an attack. This is all leading to a huge increase in the number of attacks impacting organizations every day.