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Today, the threat of cyberattacks continues growing. Whether it is a private business or government entity, big and large, no individual sector has exempted from the cybersecurity threats. This is majorly attributed to the increasing reliance on a digital infrastructure that also opens access to point to fraudsters at some level. The financial services industry is one of the most fascinating sectors that is on the cusp of digital transformation, effectively leveraging digital technologies to innovate and improve the customer experience.

Financial services provider firms continue looking to garner more gains and focusing largely on becoming holistically digital, customer-facing enterprises. As customers’ expectations increasing incessantly, companies in the sector are in quest to accomplish market leadership. In other words, innovation has become a key driver to gain a competitive edge in the financial services industry.

Now, why does cybersecurity matter in the industry?

The financial services industry is complex and sophisticated in nature; this is where financial and digital assets hold, which continues to susceptible to cyber attacks. As firms explore and deploy various digital tools as well as mobile platforms in order to deliver their services and products to consumers, the risks of being exposed to the ever-expanding attack surface also increases.

Cybercriminals capitalize on customers as they expect new features to be continuously extended, want convenience and lucrative interfaces with zero loading wait. To address such a demand, financial firms rush to make updated that often introduce glitches. Thus, organizations need to embrace cybersecurity solutions to maintain security measures and prevent data to become compromised at the expense of exciting new features. They must monitor cybercrime protection eternally to keep up with the relentlessly changing and increasingly sophisticated cyber threat landscape.

Moreover, the loss of money, confidence and customers’ trust, as well as reputation due to cybercrime, continues soaring. Malicious actors have access to all minute details, even they have the details that are unethical to be explored by engineers. For instance, whaling attacks, which target corporate executives and managers at the top of the food chain. Whalers use in-depth social engineering techniques to make contact and form bonds of trust with their targets, before convincing them to take treacherous actions.

According to reports, the London Blue network has been accused of targeting 35,000 executives worldwide, mostly in the financial sector. A data from the FBI shows that since 2013 around US$12 billion has been extracted from banks around the world by coercing Chief Financial Officers in this manner. This is where financial services firms will need heightened security spending to ward off cyber attacks.

Often, most cyber risks to the financial sector evolve from its internal people such as employees, third party vendors who handle data, and those they trust to keep customer records confidential. Now, as the number of sustained attacks surges, spending on emerging, digital technologies is likely to be a key driver for all organizations to survive in the modern cyber environment. Finance firms use a variety of technologies such as multi-factor authentication, IoT, AI, robotics process automation, among others.