The global financial system was under constant attack during 2021, as revealed by the IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index report, and the Latin American region was not immune to these excesses to servers of financial services providers, concentrating 9% of the attacks computed globally by the prestigious firm.
Server access emerged as the top type of attack on insurance and financial services organizations, accounting for 14% of all attacks. Ransomware, misconfigurations and fraud followed, tied for second place at 10% each. In Latin America, the main type of attack was ransomware, which accounted for 29% of attacks overall.
The report also points out that in terms of infection vectors, phishing was the most common, generating 46% of attacks against the financial sector in 2021.
In second place is the exploitation of vulnerabilities with 31% and “password spraying”a type of practice used by hackers using brute force to access virtual private networks or VPNs, is reflected in the third place of the infection vectors used by attackers to the traditional financial system.
Based on what was observed, IBM is suggesting three main considerations that executives should focus on in the new world:
Redefine the basis on which alliances are built: To innovate while staying secure, leaders must confirm that security standards extend from their internal programs to their relationships with vendors and third parties. Securing the supply chain requires that security teams implement proper third-party risk management procedures at each new partner and have good visibility into what happens to data when it is accessed.
Being distrustful: By operating with the notion that a technology environment is already exposed by default and that an adversary has already exploited that exposure to compromise a financial services network, the company is more prepared to examine its trust relationships. Working with risk management in mind, those trust relationships can be limited to varying degrees, whether with users, customers, or internal and third-party applications.
The report notes that the pronounced presence of ransomware cases indicates a trend towards covert cyberattacks, so before financial institutions continue to expand their cloud operations, they must implement enhanced security capabilities within the organization and across the cloud. of their ecosystems.
He also points out that augmented AI models when data is shared between institutions reinforce the industry’s immune system, revealing criminal patterns before they go viral in extended ecosystems.
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