Finance

The banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) sector has been the most targeted in 2025 accounting for 17.8 percent of all incidents (172 incidents out of 966) tracked in Cyble’s latest North American Threat Landscape Report.

The report describes a mature leak economy where a small cluster of prolific actors generate many listings, supported by a large ‘long tail’ of smaller sellers -- meaning BFSI data can be sourced by both major brokers and many opportunists.

Research released today reveals that cloud infrastructure has become the second-largest expense for tech companies, following headcount; averaging 10 percent of revenue and increasing rapidly. What’s more nearly 90 percent of companies report that it's directly affecting profitability.

The study from Cloud Capital surveyed 100 CFOs and senior financial decision makers within SaaS and technology businesses of up to 1,000 employees across the US and UK.

The death of the password has been predicted for a very long time, though other methods are now gaining significant traction.

Perhaps the most successful of these is the use of biometrics. We talked to David Stauffer, director of sales North America at Veridas, about how biometrics is transforming authentication across financial services and telcos, and how voice-based verification enhances security against fraud, user experience and operational efficiency.

Revolut, the London-based fintech, has completed a fundraising process which values the company at $75 billion. The fundraising involved a share sale which saw NVentures, NVIDIA’s venture capital arm, investing in the company.

Employees of Revolut were able to sell their shares if they wished to do so, making this the fifth time Revolut has afforded them this opportunity. The valuation and fundraising come as we near the end of a year in which the fintech gained banking authorization in Mexico, earned its banking incorporation licence in Colombia, and prepare to launch in another key market – India.

Banks, fintechs, and crypto platforms are ramping up investment in fraud prevention and identity verification (IDV), positioning it as the next layer of cyber defense, according to a new survey.

The study from Regula shows banks are leading this trend: the share of institutions intending to increase IDV budgets by more than 50 percent is nearly tripling -- from 4.4 percent to 15 percent in just two years.

A new study from Cohesity finds 70 percent of publicly traded companies have reported adjusting earnings or financial guidance after a cyberattack.

Among the impacts 68 percent say they observed an impact on their stock price, while 73 percent of privately held firms redirected budgets from innovation and growth initiatives.

Nearly 40 percent of finance professionals would consider changing employers due to outdated financial systems according to new research.

The report from insightsoftware shows businesses are struggling with the need for real-time insights and the younger generation’s demands for tools that eliminate inefficiencies and foster collaboration.

While banks and financial institutions generally have strong defenses, third-party vendors often lack the same levels of security, something that can offer providing attackers indirect access to the institutions they serve.

A new report from Black Kite examines the shifting landscape of cyber threats in the financial sector, highlighting the critical importance of understanding and mitigating the hidden dangers within the vendor ecosystem.

A newly released survey of US regulatory compliance professionals shows 63 percent say that technology-driven risk is the most significant market force likely to cause compliance issues for US financial services firms in 2025.

Other forces cited are global economic instability (58 percent), increasing regulatory complexity (48 percent), digital assets and crypto markets (37 percent each) and geopolitical instability (20 percent).

Financial institutions are facing a significant increase in deepfake fraud attempts, which have grown by a staggering 2,137 percent in the last three years.

Data from Signicat based on responses from 1,200 people in the financial and payment sectors across seven European countries, including the UK, shows that account takeover is the leading type of fraud their customers are exposed to, followed by card payment fraud and phishing.

Artificial intelligence’s rise in business, while exciting for some, is unsettling for financial professionals. They worry AI will replace them, but understanding its true power in finance turns fear into opportunity. AI isn’t here to take over -- it’s here to level up the game. The real power lies in collaboration, not competition. Finance pros who embrace AI don’t get replaced; they get supercharged.

Traditional tedious and time-consuming tasks that keep accountants bogged down -- data entry, invoice processing, reconciliation, reporting, and more -- can now be managed by AI-powered automations. Companies gain two key benefits when they embrace the shift. First, human finance professionals are delivered from the day-to-day routine and freed up to focus on fine-tuning financial strategies in a way that can drive better business outcomes. The demands of manual accounting typically keep finance professionals from having any time to zoom out and deal with big-picture planning.

The EU's Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) comes into force tomorrow (Jan 17th) but new research shows that 43 percent of the UK's financial organizations are set to miss the deadline for compliance, with 20 percent expecting to do so by at least four months.

Although the UK is outside the EU its strong financial ties with Europe mean firms operating in or interacting with EU markets will need to align with DORA standards to continue their business relationships.

New research reveals the top five industries most frequently targeted by specifically tailored phishing attacks using either the recipient's name, email address, phone number, or company name.

The study from Cofense using data drawn from the Cofense Intelligence product between Q3 2023 to Q3 2024 shows, unsurprisingly, that finance tops the list, accounting for 15.5 percent of all credential phishing emails where the product redacted information from the subject in order to safeguard the recipient.

The world is changing faster than ever, putting pressure on CFOs to create more value and be more strategic and collaborative.

Finance leaders are not only expected to understand the entire business, but they are also bogged down by the administrative work of backward-looking reporting and controls.

Almost half of financial services leaders had a positive view of AI in 2023. But despite this initial excitement, the implementation of planned initiatives this year has been sluggish.

A new report from Lucidworks finds only one in four AI projects have been deployed, similar to many of the other industries surveyed. In 2023, the most common expected impact of Gen AI for financial services was business operations improvement. The majority of deployed initiatives followed suit in 2024, however, the industry reports below average cost and revenue benefits.