By GIFT NDOLWANE
JOHANNESBURG – FINANCIAL firms are facing increasingly sophisticated threats globally with latest reports indicating the organisations face losses of about US$1 million on average per cyber security incident.
The staggering figure is revealed as part of Financial Institutions Security Risks 2016 by Kaspersky Lab, the global cybersecurity company.
The survey highlights the main security challenges for banks and financial institutions around the world and the financial costs of specific cyberattacks.
The most-costly type of incident for financial organisations are threats that exploit vulnerabilities in point-of-sale (POS) systems, in which an organisation typically loses $2 million.
Attacks on mobile devices are the second most costly ($1,6 million), followed by targeted attacks ($1,3 million).
Veniamin Levtsov, Vice President, Enterprise Business at Kaspersky Lab, said given the substantial monetary losses from cyberattacks, it is not surprising that financial organisations are looking to increase spending on security.
“We believe successful security strategies for financial organisations lie in a more balanced approach to allocating resources – not just spending on compliance, but also investing more in protection from advanced targeted attacks, paying more attention to personal security awareness and getting better insights on the industry-specific threats.”
– Guardian