Transform Financial Services Cybersecurity with Innovative Cyber Deception and Active Defense
- Cybercriminals use ransomware to lock critical systems, demanding hefty ransoms for release.
- Unauthorized access and identity theft are on the rise, compromising sensitive financial data.
- Malicious insiders and compromised employees pose significant risks from within the organization.
- Specialized malware targeting financial systems to steal data and disrupt operations.
Challenges Faced by Financial Services
Financial services are increasingly vulnerable to cyber threats as organizations continue to evolve and integrate new technologies. Organizations must navigate a complex landscape of security challenges to protect sensitive data and maintain trust with customers. These challenges are aggravated by the rapid pace of digital transformation and the ever-evolving tactics of cybercriminals. The following are some of the key challenges faced by financial services:
Expanding Attack Surface: With the proliferation of digital channels and devices, financial services have a wider attack surface, increasing the number of potential entry points for cyberattacks.
Cloud Adoption Risks: While cloud services offer scalability and flexibility, they also introduce new security vulnerabilities and data privacy concerns.
Complex Networks: The interconnected nature of financial networks means that a security breach in one area can quickly spread, affecting multiple systems and data sources.
Ineffective Application and Network Segmentation: Poor segmentation practices can lead to a failure to contain attacks, allowing threats to move laterally across the network and access sensitive information.
Cost Constraints: Allocating sufficient resources for comprehensive cybersecurity measures can be challenging, especially for small to mid-size organizations with limited budgets.
Meeting Customer Expectations: Customers expect seamless, secure, and convenient digital banking experiences. These expectations require financial services to continuously innovate without compromising security.
Traditional Security Solutions Fall Short for Financial Services
Prevention:
Regulations have associated policies that serve as a prevention-based defense mechanism. Adversaries bypass these controls by leveraging legitimate credentials.
Detection:
Financial services have relied heavily on traditional detection tools. However, much of the equipment used in finance has unique, bespoke characteristics that may be incompatible with traditional cybersecurity solutions.
Infrastructure:
Financial services infrastructure includes essential systems like transaction servers and databases for transactions and payments. In financial institutions, this infrastructure also encompasses treasury management for corporate services, core systems for transaction processing, and retail banking for consumer services.
Vulnerability Exploits:
Adversaries perform vulnerability exploits and leverage credentials to gain unauthorized access to assets in financial services.
Game-Changing Deception Use Cases for Financial Services
Protect Financial Services Assets:
Decoys representing transaction servers and databases for detecting threats against these assets.
Detect Identity-driven Attacks:
Honeytokens deployed in identity stores and on endpoints for detecting identity threats.
Detect Insider Threats and Data Exfiltration:
Baits representing financial data for detecting insider threats and exfiltration actions.
Why Acalvio for Financial Services?
Acalvio’s deception technology is specifically designed to address the unique challenges faced by financial services.
Deception Based on Financial Assets: Deploy deception strategies tailored to mimic and protect specific financial assets, while misleading and diverting attackers.
Deceptive Data Baits: Deploy data baits to lure and trap cyber threats, protecting real sensitive information.
Prepackaged Playbooks for Financial Services: Enhance threat response and management by using prepackaged playbooks designed specifically for financial services.
Agentless Solution: Eliminate management overheads with agentless deception deployment, ensuring ease of use and maintenance.
Non-Intrusive Approach: Ensure no production impact with non-intrusive deception deployment, maintaining the integrity of your operational systems.
Scalable Platform: Protect assets across large and distributed environments with Acalvio’s highly scalable platform.
Preintegrated with Existing Security Solutions: Seamlessly integrate with existing security infrastructure, including EDR, SIEM, and SOAR, to enhance overall security posture.
Frequently Asked Questions
Financial services face a range of sophisticated cyber threats, including ransomware attacks, identity theft, insider threats, and specialized malware like banking trojans. These threats exploit the interconnected nature of financial systems to access valuable data.
Traditional security solutions fall short because they rely heavily on prevention and standard detection tools, which are often incompatible with the unique characteristics of financial infrastructure. In addition, attack methods such as identity compromise can completely bypass most cybersecurity solutions.
Deception technology enhances cybersecurity by deploying decoys and honeytokens that detect threats, such as identity-driven attacks, insider threats, and data exfiltration. This novel approach not only safeguards real sensitive information but also misleads and diverts attackers.
