As banking and finance cybersecurity specialists, LRQA Nettitude have years of experience in working with and helping to protect the world’s most prominent Financial Institutions (FIs) and Financial Market Infrastructures (FMIs) from cyber-attacks.

The Need for Cybersecurity in Financial Services

All sectors face cyber risk, but some are targeted more than others and the finance sector stands out among these. FIs and FMIs are a constant and prominent target for a significant number of threat actors, ranging from organised criminal gangs through to employees. This is because they hold a significant amount of sensitive and valuable information and numerous potential opportunities for cybercriminals to financially gain from their attacks.

The potential for immediate financial gain stems from transferring money, making purchases, or selling information on the black market, these opportunities create low risk and high reward for the cybercriminals, and it is an ever-increasing problem that will not go away.

Quite simply, threat actors are looking to exploit and undermine FIs and FMIs through cybercrime, and unfortunately, some do succeed.

Common types of cyber-attack on financial service organisations:

1. Spear Phishing Campaigns

This is where attackers specifically target identified individuals, with a view of coercing them to do something, like visiting a malicious website or opening an attachment. Spear Phishing, due to its targeted nature, is a very effective threat vector for the delivery of malware, but also obtaining credentials and/or sensitive data.

2. DDoS Attacks

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are where the perpetrators can suspend a service(s) sometimes affecting millions of customers at one time.

3. Ransomware

These attacks can and do result in the permanent loss of data and significant operational impact. Ransomware has fast become a prolific problem, and with the rise of numerous ransomware and access groups, attacks now include the stealing and exposure of data.

4. Zero-day Exploitation

Hackers also exploit FIs and FMIs networks through software flaws known as Zero-day attacks. A Zero-day is a computer-software vulnerability previously unknown. Until the vulnerability is mitigated, hackers can exploit it to adversely affect programs, data, additional computers or a network.  

Cybersecurity in the Financial Industry

The financial services sector has historically had a higher level of cyber maturity compared to many other industries. The industry experiences a relatively high level of regulation, and consequently, this has seen many different tools and frameworks being developed to try to support the industry defend and respond to evolving cyber threats.

LRQA Nettitude has a strong alignment to the financial services sector and have a dedicated team of professionals that are solely focused on delivering services for this industry. 

Through focused research initiatives, we deliver tailored services that focus on:

In our labs, we reverse engineer hardware and software systems to identify Zero-day vulnerabilities that are specifically aligned to the financial services sector. These are frequently leveraged by our technical assurance teams when we deliver sophisticated red teaming and attack simulation services.

LRQA Nettitude delivers some of the most sophisticated red teaming and attack simulation services to its clients globally. Our services extend much further than just focusing on identifying defensive vulnerabilities. Through extensive experience in delivering services to the financial services sector, we can also provide robust guidance on how to detect and respond to financial services-oriented threat actors.

Financial Services Cybersecurity Accreditations

For larger financial services organisations operating in multiple territories, navigating all of the different regulations is increasingly challenging. LRQA Nettitude has extensive experience in supporting senior stakeholders to navigate these cybersecurity frameworks.

Our research team launched a review and analysis that compared some of these frameworks in 2019. This can be downloaded here.

LRQA Nettitude Can Help Your Financial Services Organisation Become Cyber Secure

Explore our related cyber services for financial services clients:

Why Choose LRQA Nettitude As Your Cybersecurity Partner?

Mitigate cyber risk

LRQA Nettitude helps its clients to stay one step ahead of cybercriminals, giving a first-line cyber defence and response to all types of incident, and resilience to stand up to cyber-attacks. It also encourages intelligence sharing amongst the finance industry, and sophisticated testing to mitigate an organisations risk of a breach or an attack at every level.

LRQA Nettitude’s cybersecurity credentials

As a trusted member of CREST and one of the world’s first accredited CBEST testing organisations you can be sure that you are in the most capable hands.

We are proud to be one of the few global companies that is certified by CREST across all key disciplines. Our team of consultants have achieved the highest accreditations for Penetration Testing, Red Teaming, Incident Response services and Threat Intelligence. In parallel, we were the first organisation to be accredited for our Security Operation Centre services.

LRQA Nettitude are certified by a range of governing bodies for our work within highly regulated industries, in the financial sectors and the payment card industry and are approved as a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) company. We practise what we preach and have the highest levels of rigour applied to all the risk management and security controls that are relevant to our organisation itself. We are certified against ISO 27001 and ISO 9001.

LRQA Nettitude’s research and development

Through its research and development (R&D) as well as active client work, LRQA Nettitude’s dedicated R&D team analyses and studies threat actor behaviour, gaining greater insight into the specific threat landscape within the financial sector. You can also access LRQA Nettitude’s latest zero-day discoveries through LRQA Nettitude Labs and subscribe to receive LRQA Nettitude’s most recent findings as they are publicly released. 

General Enquiry.

The Need for Cybersecurity in Financial Services

All sectors face cyber risk, but some are targeted more than others and the finance sector stands out among these.

FIs and FMIs are a constant and prominent target for a significant number of threat actors, ranging from organised criminal gangs through to employees.

This is because they hold a significant amount of sensitive and valuable information and numerous potential opportunities for cybercriminals to financially gain from their attacks.

The potential for immediate financial gain stems from transferring money, making purchases, or selling information on the black market, these opportunities create low risk and high reward for the cybercriminals, and it is an ever-increasing problem that will not go away.

Quite simply, threat actors are looking to exploit and undermine FIs and FMIs through cybercrime, and unfortunately, some do succeed.

Common types of cyber attack on financial service organisations:

1. Spear Phishing Campaigns

This is where attackers specifically target identified individuals, with a view of coercing them to do something, like visiting a malicious website or opening an attachment.

Spear Phishing, due to its targeted nature, is a very effective threat vector for the delivery of malware, but also obtaining credentials and/or sensitive data.

2. DDoS Attacks

Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are where the perpetrators can suspend a service(s) sometimes affecting millions of customers at one time.

3. Ransomware

These attacks can and do result in the permanent loss of data and significant operational impact.

Ransomware has fast become a prolific problem, and with the rise of numerous ransomware and access groups, attacks now include the stealing and exposure of data.

4. Zero-day Exploitation

Hackers also exploit FIs and FMIs networks through software flaws known as Zero-day attacks.

A Zero-day is a computer-software vulnerability previously unknown. Until the vulnerability is mitigated, hackers can exploit it to adversely affect programs, data, additional computers or a network.

Cybersecurity in the Financial Industry

The financial services sector has historically had a higher level of cyber maturity compared to many other industries.

The industry experiences a relatively high level of regulation, and consequently, this has seen many different tools and frameworks being developed to try to support the industry defend and respond to evolving cyber threats.

LRQA Nettitude has a strong alignment to the financial services sector and have a dedicated team of professionals that are solely focused on delivering services for this industry.

Through focused research initiatives, we deliver tailored services that focus on:

In our labs, we reverse engineer hardware and software systems to identify Zero-day vulnerabilities that are specifically aligned to the financial services sector.

These are frequently leveraged by our technical assurance teams when we deliver sophisticated red teaming and attack simulation services.

LRQA Nettitude delivers some of the most sophisticated red teaming and attack simulation services to its clients globally. Our services extend much further than just focusing on identifying defensive vulnerabilities.

Through extensive experience in delivering services to the financial services sector, we can also provide robust guidance on how to detect and respond to financial services-oriented threat actors.

Financial Services Cybersecurity Accreditations

For larger financial services organisations that operate in multiple territories, it is increasingly challenging to navigate all of the different regulations.

LRQA Nettitude has extensive experience in supporting senior stakeholders to navigate these cybersecurity frameworks.

Our research team launched a review and analysis that compared some of these frameworks in 2019. This can be downloaded here.

LRQA Nettitude Can Help Your Financial Services Organisation Become Cyber Secure

Explore our related cyber services for financial services clients:

Why Choose LRQA Nettitude As Your Cybersecurity Partner?

Mitigate cyber risk

LRQA Nettitude helps its clients to stay one step ahead of cybercriminals, giving a first-line cyber defence and response to all types of incident, and resilience to stand up to cyber-attacks.

It also encourages intelligence sharing amongst the finance industry, and sophisticated testing to mitigate an organisations risk of a breach or an attack at every level.

LRQA Nettitude’s cybersecurity credentials

As a trusted member of CREST and one of the world’s first accredited CBEST testing organisations, you can be sure that you are in the most capable hands.

We are proud to be one of the few global companies that is certified by CREST across all key disciplines.

Our team of consultants have achieved the highest accreditations for Penetration Testing, Red Teaming, Incident Response services and Threat Intelligence.

In parallel, we were the first organisation to be accredited for our Security Operation Centre services.

LRQA Nettitude are certified by a range of governing bodies for our work within highly regulated industries, in the financial sectors and the payment card industry and are approved as a Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) company.

We practise what we preach and have the highest levels of rigour applied to all the risk management and security controls that are relevant to our organisation itself. We are certified against ISO 27001 and ISO 9001.

LRQA Nettitude’s research and development

Through its research and development (R&D) as well as active client work, LRQA Nettitude’s dedicated R&D team analyses and studies threat actor behaviour, gaining greater insight into the specific threat landscape within the financial sector.

You can also access LRQA Nettitude’s latest zero-day discoveries through LRQA Nettitude Labs and subscribe to receive LRQA Nettitude’s most recent findings as they are publicly released.

General Enquiry.