As the world continues to digitize, financial services become more susceptible to cyberattacks each year. With ransomware attacks, nation state recruitment efforts, the Great Resignation, changing employee behaviors, and partners, third-party contractors and consultants gaining more access to company software, there are a myriad of opportunities for attackers to target financial services organizations. Size is no defense – big banks like J.P. Morgan will be targeted because of the large amount of sensitive data they hold, while smaller financial institutions will be targeted because they don't have the budgets for adequate security infrastructure and attackers know it.

Just how significant is the problem? Here are some statistics:

• According to Positive, 93% of company networks can be penetrated by cybercriminals;
• Sixty-six percent of financial institutions aren't confident they could recover from an attack, Veritas Research reported; and
• Forty percent of banks receive irrelevant, incorrect or duplicate alerts from their security software, according to Ponemon Institute.

As cyberattacks targeting the financial sector proliferate, mandatory cybersecurity regulations force organizations to be held accountable for their security posture. Financial services organizations, depending on their type and size, are required to maintain compliance with regulations such as ISO/IEC 27001, NIST 800-53, PCI DSS, EU-General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), UK-GDPR, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX), the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA), the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) and EU-Payment Services Directive 2 (PSD2).