Financial Sector Faces Ransomware Attacks, Now More Than Ever

Some stats your way

• Sixty-three percent of financial institutions admitted to suffering a rise in destructive cyberattacks.
• Around 75% faced at least one ransomware attack, among which 63% paid the ransom. 
• An increase of 60% in island hopping has been observed. 
• Sixty-seven percent of financial firms underwent timestamp manipulation, aka Chronos. Among these, 44% targeted market positions. 
• Two out of three firms (66%) suffered attacks attempting to siphon data related to market strategies. 

Why this matters

• Security of systems connected to the internet is still lacking. This gap provides opportunities to cybercriminals.
• However, financial motives are the biggest cause of such a rise in attacks. The expansion of digital money payment systems provides attackers pseudo-anonymity to expedite their actions.
• The research has, moreover, found that once threat actors gain access to a network, they are looking for non-public market information, such as large transactions, earnings estimates, and public offerings. 

Market manipulation

• Threat actors have realized that non-public market information is the most significant asset possessed by any financial institution, instead of access to capital or wire transfer.
• The information includes corporate strategies or data that can impact a firm’s share price as soon as it becomes public. 
• This threat posed by economic espionage can be leveraged to digitize insider trading and front-run the market. 
• Furthermore, they have set their sights on seizing brokerage accounts, which may enable them to sell or buy securities at a far lower rate. 

The bottom line