Originally published on financierworldwide.com.
Virtually every company – from small-scale enterprise to multinational – is a potential victim of cyber crime. The financial services (FS) sector in particular is an obvious target, given the sensitive data and the trillions of dollars routinely handled by financial institutions (FIs).
According to Boston Consulting Group’s ‘Global Wealth 2019: Reigniting Radical Growth’ report, FS firms are 300 times more likely than other companies to be targeted by a cyber attack. Furthermore, a 2020 Accenture report – ‘Securing the Digital Economy: Reinventing the Internet for Trust’– forecasts that nearly $350bn could be lost by the FS sector to cyber crime over the next five years. When mapped across 16 additional sectors over the same period, the economic value at risk globally is $5.2 trillion (a figure likely to escalate in the wake of the coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak).