Protection for Insurance and Financial Services

The Growing Threat to the Insurance and Financial Services Sector

The cyber security threats to the insurance and financial services sector have been on the upsurge in recent years. As cyber security threats to the insurance and financial services industry intensify, banks and financial institutions do not have a choice but to become proactive and invest in building cyber resilience.

Financial service organisations are 300 times more likely to experience cyber attacks than organisations across other sectors

Given the interconnected nature of the banking sector, an attack on any of the 5 most active US banks would affect 38% of the network

In, 2019, 62% of exposed data was financial services data. The associated annual cost is estimated to exceed $200 billion globally.

Cyber attacks can lead to significant financial losses. Not only can cyber criminals steal money directly from bank accounts or use stolen credit card details for fraudulent transactions, but data breaches can result in regulatory fines, legal costs, and reputational damage. The cost of cybercrime in the financial services industry continues to increase.

In the years 2009 through 2019, some of the world’s most recognizable names in this sector were breached on more than one occasion. American Express and SunTrust Bank were breached five times, and Capital One and Discover were breached four times each during this period.

Types of cyber-attacks

Cyber risks have become one of the main issues for global security. Cyber threats have been identified as a systemic risk to the stability of the European financial system, but cyber attacks tend to be underreported.

Ransomware attacks, such as the recent attack on the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China that disrupted trades in the US treasury market, demonstrated the need for international cooperation against ransomware attacks, which are a global threat. Such cooperation is necessary to make the business model of criminals unattractive, by making attacks more risky and less profitable.

The growing number of cyberattacks against financial services companies reflects how this sector has turned to technology to solve many of the problems it faces. To increase market share, many financial institutions rely on big data.

With the average time to identify and contain a breach in financial industries being 233 days, it is important to protect your website from malicious bots and it requires a specialist skillset from an expert cyber security partner, such as Veracity Trust Network.

Get protected today

Caspian Insurance, an award winning, industry leading insurance brokerage, were aware that the insurance industry faces a big challenge in the form of cybercrime. Leveraging online advertising for customer acquisition, Caspian had increasing issues with click fraud and fake bot traffic skewing analysis and wasting marketing budgets.

Against this backdrop, they began investigating a bot detection and mitigation solution for both ads and their websites. They decided to assess Veracity’s solutions for Ad Fraud and Web Threat Protection, impressed with the AI enabled capability to successfully detect sophisticated bots, which increasingly evade traditional web defences as they mimic human behaviour.

Veracity Trust Network’s Web Threat Protection identified and stopped 58% of web traffic identified as Malicious Bots looking for vulnerabilities and potential attack points on their website.

In addition to web protection, with Ad Fraud Prevention in place, since April 2023, they have saved nearly £100,000 in wasted spend. Over that time, Caspian Insurance have seen a huge 74% reduction in fraudulent traffic engaging in their ads, meaning they can be confident their budget is being spent efficiently.

How Veracity Trust Network has helped others in this sector

Examples of cyber attacks in the Insurance and Financial Services Sector

Data breaches don’t just hit small businesses with limited resources. Even some of the world’s biggest brands have been negatively impacted.

In February 2016, hackers targeted the central bank of Bangladesh and exploited vulnerabilities in SWIFT, the global financial system’s main electronic payment messaging system, trying to steal $1 billion.

While most transactions were blocked, $101 million still disappeared. The heist was a wake-up call for the finance world that systemic cyber risks in the financial system had been severely underestimated.

A data breach of French health insurance companies in January 2024 affected 33 million French citizens, or nearly half the country’s population. The attack compromised sensitive birth date, social security, and marital status information, but not medical history.

The French data protection agency opened an investigation to determine if the companies complied with cybersecurity guidelines under the EU’s General Data Protection Regulations.

“Implementing Ad Fraud Prevention, we’ve saved around 25% of our ad spend that previously would have been squandered on non-human ad clicks.”

“Veracity’s Web Threat Protection, we have gained peace of mind regarding cybersecurity risks to our website and business.”

“We have far more accurate website data to give richer and more accurate insights that will help us serve our customers even better.”

Hayley Lucas, Head of Marketing at Caspian Insurance

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