"Financial Services Targeted in 28% of UK Cyberattacks Last Year"

Security researchers at Imperva have discovered that over a quarter of all cyberattacks (28%) in the UK have hit the financial services and insurance (FSI) industry in the last 12 months.  The researchers noted that application programming interface (API) attacks, bad bots, and DDoS attacks were the industry's three most significant security challenges over the last year.  The researchers stated that a third of all traffic goes unmonitored, indicating that organizations urgently need to revise their API protection strategies.  APIs connect directly to the data layer, so businesses have to see API security as an extension of their data security strategy.  The researchers stated that every organization needs full visibility over every API in their environment, what data is flowing through each one, and who's accessing it.  The researchers noted that the scale of unmonitored API traffic is substantially higher than in other industries, suggesting that FSI companies' implementation of Open Banking standards may have inadvertently created a serious, industry-wide security threat.  The researchers stated that bad bots were responsible for more than a quarter (27%) of all traffic to financial businesses last year.  Account takeover (ATO) attempts also heavily targeted the FSI industry, with roughly 40% of all ATOs hitting financial websites.

Infosecurity reports: "Financial Services Targeted in 28% of UK Cyberattacks Last Year"