Mitigating Cyber Threats in Banking with Next-Generation Platforms

Celent examines pervasive cyber threats, cybersecurity frameworks and methodologies, and the current and future state of the art in cyber defense technologies.

_{Figure 6: Next-Generation Tools for Cybersecurity}

Cyber attacks are a systemic reality that pose an existential threat to banks and their customers on a daily basis.

Attacks take multiple forms, are focused on different parts of a bank, and seek to achieve various aims. The majority of attacks against firms have financial objectives. At the same time, attacks perpetrated by rogue states or terrorists and aimed at espionage or sabotage also pose a serious threat.

Cyber criminals use advanced technology and methods, constantly evolve new techniques and playbooks, and move quickly to evade attempts to block their activities. Threats range from commoditized attacks based on phishing, bots, and malware; to complex schemes targeting large payloads that start with systems reconnaissance by threat actors and play out over weeks, months, or years.

Cybersecurity is now a concern not only of individual firms, but ultimately a systemic threat to the entire financial system. There are numerous possible scenarios where coordinated threats against multiple individual banks lead to a general financial contagion, possibly on a global scale.

Moreover, the defining elements of modern banking such as digital financial services ecosystems, shared transactional networks, cloud infrastructure, reliance on third party suppliers, and more, combine to provide additional potential attack vectors exploiting these commonalities.

The breadth and scale of cyber threats—epitomized by the emergence of bot attacks driven by artificial intelligence (AI)—now call for a next-generation response. Big Data analytics and AI tools will become indispensable pillars of cybersecurity arsenals.

This report was sponsored by Splunk, while Celent retained full editorial control.