Trojans and Malware threaten FSI

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The Banking and Financial Services sector is struggling with a skills shortage along with the sheer volume of threats and alerts as it continues its ongoing battle against cybercrime, according to a Twitter poll conducted by cyberthreat intelligence provider Blueliv (https://www.blueliv.com).

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The poll revealed that roughly a third (31%) of respondents are concerned about the impact banking Trojans and mobile malware (28%) will have on financial services organisations and their customers in 2020.  This is in line with Blueliv’s latest cyberthreat intelligence report for the financial services sector, ‘Follow the money: cyberthreat intelligence for Banking & Financial Services’ (https://www.blueliv.com/threat-intelligence-finance-whitepaper).

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Tracking the latest evolving threats, Blueliv’s researchers observed a 283% increase in botnets relating to Trickbot as well as a 130% increase in Dridex botnets.  These botnets are linked to the distribution of banking Trojans and other malware families targeting the financial services sector.

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While the financial services sector – by its very nature – has some of the most mature cyberdefense strategies and is ahead of many other industries in detecting and preventing economic crime, weak spots remain in some organizations’ fraud risk assessments.  

 

This is underlined by the fact that 35% of poll respondents named fraud prevention the most crucial element to an ongoing cybersecurity strategy.  Unauthorised transmission of data from within an organization to external recipients is another key concern, with 31% of respondents considering the prevention of data leaks the most important.

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Blueliv’s report also highlights that malware targeting mobile apps is one of the most rapidly developing threats to the financial services sector, with functionalities that allow criminals to gather user credentials as well as steal funds from mobile users’ bank accounts.

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“Organizations in the financial sector face a constantly changing threat landscape,” comments Daniel Solís, CEO and founder, Blueliv.  “Business priorities have shifted and digital risk management is now central. Because they are such high-value targets for cybercriminal activity and FSI security teams can be easily overwhelmed by the number of threat alerts they receive which can very quickly result in alert fatigue and desensitisation to real, preventable threats.  Threat intelligence can address the cyberskills gap through continuous automated monitoring combined with human resource to provide context, helping FSIs develop highly-targeted threat detection, prevention and investigation capabilities.”