While the majority of financial firms measured haven't yet been hit, the data paints a sobering picture of breaches and attacks.

Hackers have hit 42 per cent of US-based financial services firms, and caused data breaches at 12 per cent of them, according to the 2017 Thales Data Threat Report - Financial Services Edition. This will add to perceptions of how cyber-crime is a major menace to sectors such as wealth management.

The report, carried out by technology firm Thales, surveyed more than 1,100 senior security IT executives from financial services organizations around the world.

It also found that 24 per cent of financial services organizations suffered a data breach in the past year alone, up from 19 per cent in 2016. And 86 per cent of respondents said that they believe their organizations are vulnerable to data threats.

Many financial organizations are making the leap from legacy systems to technologies such as cloud, big data, container, and IoT solutions due to consumer demands and marketplace pressures. Almost all (96 per cent) of the respondents are set to use sensitive data in an advanced technology environment this year, while only 47 per cent are deploying these technologies in advance of having appropriate levels of data security in place.

With large volumes of data and applications moving to the cloud, 53 per cent of respondents are most concerned about shared infrastructure vulnerabilities and lack of data-location control, with security breaches at the cloud service provider (CSP) coming in second at 52 per cent.

Just over three-quarters (78 per cent) of respondents said their firms will increase their IT security spending in a bid to combat threats to cyber-security.

Within the report, Thales suggested some ways financial services organizations should look towards to meet compliance and adopt advanced technologies:

-- Select data security platforms that address a variety of use cases, emphasize ease-of-use, and offer encryption, enterprise key management, access control and security intelligence to avoid the intricacy and high costs of implementing multiple data-security solutions; 
-- Invest in security tools that include automation to reduce complexity;
-- Implement security analytics and multi-factor authentication solutions to help identify threatening patterns of data use.

“Data breaches continue to hit the headlines and, as recently illustrated by the Equifax breach, the financial services industry is a prime target for hackers,” said Peter Galvin, vice president of strategy at Thales e-Security. “As digitization continues to transform the industry’s online infrastructures it is critical organizations implement data security solutions that follow the data – wherever it is created, shared or stored.”

Financial services firms have started to increase their spending on cyber-security due to frequent occurrence of cyber-attacks, including the recent Equifax attack. As reported by this publication, NC4®, a cyber-security and physical threat protection firm, recently rolled out a program called Cyber Defense Network for the Financial Services Industry, or CDN/FS. The program draws together expertise to fight hackers.

The scale of the problem has been highlighted by the recent breach suffered by Equifax, the credit reporting firm, with 143 million people affected. Criminals hit JP Morgan in 2014, compromising 76 million accounts. Logistics firms, the UK's National Health Service, Germany's rail network, even the Internal Revenue Service, have been hit. Cyber-security is now a rising up the budgetary priority list of financial and other firms. A recent conference by this news service in New York addressed how family offices should consider the threat and possible countermeasures.