Reinventing Risk and Compliance for Financial Services

February 20, 2025 |

0 min read

Lionel Menchaca

The financial services industry is one that tends to lead when it comes to cybersecurity technology. It’s necessary as new transformative technology like GenAI becomes more widely used, the number of sophisticated attacks keeps rising and privacy regulations get more complex to navigate—all while the average cost of data breaches continues to surge.

Walking the Tightrope Between Security and Innovation

There’s a natural tension between security and innovation for all financial institutions these days. Innovations like cloud-based services and artificial intelligence help financial institutions move faster, to work more efficiently in the service of more customers. But these innovations also increase financial institutions’ attack surfaces and increase potential points of entry for cybercriminals.

And we all know that cybercriminals are among the first to leverage new technology like GenAI.

More Regulations and More Cyber Attacks

Financial institutions also have to comply with an increasing number of data regulations like the EU’s Financial Data Access (FiDA) regulation, Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) both require new levels of transparency in terms of how financial institutions handle IT risk management. And the recently-activated Network and Information Security Directive 2 (NIS2) places new compliance demands on incident response times and cyber resilience.

Not surprisingly, the number of external threats like phishing and ransomware attacks increases each year. And to top it off, the average cost of a data breach in the finance sector now exceeds more than $6 million per incident, second only to the healthcare industry.

We at Forcepoint can help your institution find that balance between security and innovation. When you’re ready to dive deeper, check out our new DSE Guide to Securing Financial Services eBook, or talk to an expert today.

Lionel Menchaca
As the Content Marketing and Technical Writing Specialist, Lionel leads Forcepoint's blogging efforts. He's responsible for the company's global editorial strategy and is part of a core team responsible for content strategy and execution on behalf of the company.
Before Forcepoint, Lionel founded and ran Dell's blogging and social media efforts for seven years. He has a degree from the University of Texas at Austin in Archaeological Studies.
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