Cyber-crime within the financial services industry has reached unprecedented *levels and

Top 8 future cyber security threats to the financial services sector

currently costs the global economy £266 billion each year. As companies increasingly adapt to emerging technologies, such as digital wallet service Apple Pay and Near Field Communication (NFC), the likelihood of hacks and data security breaches is rising.

Neil Cross, Managing Director of Advanced 365, explains, “The financial services industry must find a balance between embracing innovation to establish a competitive advantage whilst meeting needs for greater compliance and cyber security in order to survive. At present, too many firms are preparing for yesterday’s threat instead of updating their strategies to defend against tomorrow’s.”

Cross outlines below the top eight technology threats that financial services firms will face in the future.

1. Botnet attacks – The Botnet (robots and networks) of Things is a group of computers or internet-connected devices that have been hacked to commit fraud or attack servers. Industry experts estimate that botnet attacks have contributed to the loss of millions of pounds from financial institutions. Mass adoption of the Internet of Things will only exacerbate security challenges as it introduces billions of potential new bots.
2. Self-mutating computer virus – ‘Pandoras’ are regarded as the next generation of self-mutating computer virus attacks. They are designed to destabilise, confuse and destroy critical electronic infrastructures essential to the financial services industry. From a strategic perspective, they can be used as both offensive and defensive security mechanism.
3. Near Field Communication (NFC) – NFC allows two devices within a short distance of each other to exchange data. It is increasingly being adopted by banks to introduce new products and facilitate mobile payments. Customers are susceptible to aggressive avatar-based attacks which rely on advanced digital creation assembled from stolen aspects of an individual’s identity.
4. Payments technology – Mass market adoption of new mobile payments technologies, such as Apple Pay and Google Wallet, is expected to occur by the end of 2016. Hackers are intensifying their efforts as companies and consumers increasingly adopt these new systems and related fraud cases in the United States are already totalling millions of dollars.
5. Biohacking – Biohacking applies to advanced techniques that use science and technology to affect human performance and could be a target for radical security breaches. Smart implants will be used for identification and authentication of individuals which include the ability to access buildings and activate mobile phones, in addition to making bank transactions to replace smartphone PIN codes.
6. Big data and the cloud – In ten years’ time, most of the world’s data will move through or be stored in the cloud at some stage. This is expected to result in more sophisticated data security attacks targeting cloud infrastructures, shifting from device-based to cloud-based botnets, hijacking distributed processing power.
7. Mobile – 80% of internet connections could originate from a mobile platform by 2025. Industry experts predict that mobile devices will no longer be used to crack a phone code or steal data from a device itself. Instead they will be targeted by cyber criminals as a catalyst for obtaining additional data resources that can be accessed via the cloud.
8. Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) – Heavily regulated industries are struggling with the risks introduced by allowing employees to bring their own devices. A 2014 survey of financial services respondents by PwC revealed that 44% said employees represented the highest and most likely source of security incidents. This figure is 9% higher compared with the all industries’ average.

Cross adds, “Financial services providers must adapt to the new world and the demands it places on their organisation. Businesses that fail to demonstrate a greater awareness of emerging technological challenges and transform their notion of security could fall prey to damaging breaches.”

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The report discloses how much criminals can profit from malware attacks, which data they target, how they get

Cybercrime compromises by Industry

inside, how long it takes for businesses to detect and contain data breaches, what types of businesses criminals are targeting and where the majority of victims are located. It also reveals the most commonly used exploits, most prevalent malware families and more.

Trustwave experts gathered the data from 574 breach investigations the company’s SpiderLabs team conducted in 2014 across 15 countries in addition to proprietary threat intelligence gleaned from the company’s five global Security Operations Centers, security scanning and penetration testing results, telemetry from security technologies distributed across the globe and industry-leading security research.

2015 Trustwave Global Security Report: Key Highlights

• Return on investment: Attackers receive an estimated 1,425% return on investment for exploit kit and ransomware schemes ($84,100 net revenue for each $5,900 investment)
•  Weak application security: 98% of applications tested by Trustwave in 2014 had at least one vulnerability. The maximum number of vulnerabilities Trustwave experts found in a single application was 747. The median number of vulnerabilities per application increased 43% in 2014 from the previous year.
• The password problem: “Password1″ was still the most commonly used password. 39% of passwords were eight characters long. The estimated time it took Trustwave security testers to crack an eight-character password was one day. The estimated time it takes to crack a ten-character password is 591 days.
• Where victims reside: Half of the compromises Trustwave investigated occurred in the United States (a nine percentage point decrease from 2013).
• Who criminals target: Retail was the most compromised industry making up 43% of Trustwave’s investigations followed by food and beverage (13%) and hospitality (12%).

• Top assets compromised:  42% of investigations were of e-commerce breaches. Forty were of point-of-sale (POS) breaches. POS compromises increased seven percentage points from 2013 to 2014, making up 33% of Trustwave’s investigations in 2013 and 40% in 2014. E-commerce compromises decreased 13 percentage points from 2013 to 2014.
• Data most targeted: In 31% of cases Trustwave investigators found attackers targeted payment card track data (up 12 percentage points over 2013). Track data is the information on the back of a payment card that’s needed for an in-person transaction. Twenty percent of the time attackers sought either financial credentials or proprietary information (compared to 45% in 2013) meaning attackers shifted their focus back to payment card data.
• Lack of self-detection: The majority of victims, 81%, did not detect breaches themselves. The report reveals that self-detection leads to quicker containment of a breach. In 2014, for self-detected breaches, a median of 14.5 days elapsed from intrusion to containment. For breaches detected by an external party, a median of 154 days elapsed from intrusion to containment.
• How criminals break in: Weak remote access security and weak passwords tied as the vulnerability most exploited by criminals in 2014. Weak remote access security or weak passwords contributed to 94% of POS breaches.
• Spam on the decline: Spam volume continues to decrease making up 60% of total inbound mail (compared to 69% in 2013 and more than 90% at its peak in 2008), but six percent of it included a malicious attachment or link, a slight increase from 2013.

Industry breakdown of IT environments compromised by Cybercrime

“To defend against today’s sophisticated criminals, businesses must see attacks from their front windshield instead of their rear view mirror,” said Trustwave Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President Robert J. McCullen. “By providing a wealth of current, actionable data breach trends and threat intelligence, our 2015 Trustwave Global Security Report helps businesses identify what’s coming so that they can engage the people, processes and technologies needed to thwart cybercrime attacks that can generate close to a 1,500 return on investment.”

Download a complimentary copy of the full 2015_TrustwaveGlobalSecurityReport

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