Financial Industry Takes Most Heat for Data Breaches: Study

Some of the tricks hackers use are the business email compromise (BEC), which tricks someone in the company into sending funds to a bogus account; ransomware, shutting down a company’s systems until a ransom is paid; and phishing, which is the most common in financial sector companies. Phishing emails lure the recipient into clicking on a link, attachment or website that can then infect the computer with malware.

Attacks are getting more sophisticated and more common, with the risks including having to deal with irate clients and offering free or discounted services to them, time spent dealing with the situation, reputational damage and the cost of lost customers.

Some of the measures eMoney Advisor suggests to protect data include two-factor authentication, which makes it more difficult for bad guys to gain access to client accounts; encryption, which keeps hackers from being able to make sense of data if they’ve hacked in directly; and backups, which can protect against ransomware by allowing companies to restore their own data.

Vendors need to be monitored and a disaster recovery plan just for cyberattacks should be in place, and companies should also be prepared to review “lessons learned” in the wake of a problem.

Last but not least, “cybersecurity hygiene” that keeps systems and security measures current and active; better training of users to avoid their being taken in by tricks; and testing security to make sure that everything is working and protected as it should be have to be on a company’s list of protective measures.