Understaffed IT teams and lack of cybersecurity expertise hinder financial organisations

Netwrix has published findings for the financial sector from its global 2021 Netwrix Cloud Data Security Report.

In 2020, the most common incidents that financial organisations suffered regarding data in the cloud were phishing attacks (reported by 26%), targeted attacks on cloud infrastructure (22%) and ransomware (15%). Among organisations that experienced a data breach, 20% had to cover unplanned expenses to fix security gaps, 19% faced compliance fines and 17% experienced customer churn.

The Netwrix report also revealed that 59% of financial organisations consider understaffed IT and security teams to be the major reason they struggle to secure data in the cloud. Other factors include lack of expertise in cloud security (44%) and employee negligence (37%).

Other survey findings for the financial vertical include:

• 53% of financial organisations store customer data in the cloud, and 35% store financial data there
• Targeted attacks on cloud infrastructure took the longest to detect and resolve — 41% of financial organisations needed days or weeks to discover the incident, and 38% spent days or weeks on response.
• 70% of respondents audit user activity in the cloud in order to mitigate data security risks
• In response to the pandemic, 30% of respondents had to change their IT priorities but stick to their existing budget. 19% reported security budget cuts.

“Cloud technologies enable financial organisations to remain competitive and offer innovative services to their clients. To leverage the cloud in a secure and compliant manner, financial organisations should invest in automated security tools such as data discovery and classification and provide training to ensure their security pros can adapt to the rapidly changing cyber landscape,” said Ilia Sotnikov, Vice President of Product Management at Netwrix.