Security trends in the financial services sector - April 2017

The financial services sector has been a magnet for cybercrime for over two decades now, and that was certainly true again in 2016. As revealed in the 2017 IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index, the sector was attacked more than any other industry, with the average financial services client organization monitored by IBM Security Services experiencing 65 percent more attacks than the average client organization across all industries (see Figure 1). Moreover, 2016 saw an average 29 percent increase in attacks on financial services organizations—up from 1,310 attacks in 20151 to 1,684 in 2016.