News

Costs of cyberattack greater for financial services than for other industries

February 16, 2018

Cyberattacks cost the financial services sector more than any other industry, and the rate of breaches in the sector has tripled over the past five years, according to "Cost of Cyber Crime Study," a report from Accenture and the Ponemon Institute.

The report examines the costs that organizations incur when responding to cybercrime incidents, and found that the average cost of cybercrime for financial services companies globally has increased more than 40 percent over the past three years, from $12.97 million per company in 2014 to $18.28 million in 2017.

This is significantly higher than the average cost of $11.7 million per company across all industries included in the study, the release said.

At the same time, the financial-services sector appears to be less affected than other industries by more common forms of cyberattacks, such as WannaCry and Petya, which cost several global firms hundreds of millions of dollars in lost revenues in 2017. These were among the least costly types of cyberattacks for financial services companies.

"[Financial services] companies have considerably more balanced and appropriate spending levels on key security technologies to combat sophisticated attacks than do those in other industries," said Chris Thompson, a senior managing director at Accenture who leads financial services security and resilience in the company's Security practice. "This is particularly true with regard to the use of automation, artificial intelligence and machine-learning technologies, which could be critical to future cybersecurity efforts."

Among other findings:

• The average number of breaches per company has more than tripled over the past five years, from 40 in 2012 to 125 in 2017; this is slightly below the global average of 130 across all industries.
• Nearly two-thirds (60 percent) of financial services companies' total security cost goes toward containment and detection of cyberbreaches.
• The greatest impact of cyberbreaches on financial services firms is business disruption and information loss, which account for 87 percent of the cost to respond, with revenue loss accounting for only 13 percent.

The report notes that more can be done with regard to security technologies deployed in financial services. Only 26 percent of companies have deployed AI security technologies, and less than 31 percent use advanced analytics.

Download the study.

Financial services industry data for the study was collected from 352 interviews conducted over a 10-month period from a benchmark sample of 42 organizations in seven countries: the U.S.; the U.K.; Australia; Germany; Japan; France; and Italy. The study represents the annualized cost over a one-year period to detect, recover, investigate and manage response for cybercrime incidents. Also covered are costs that result in after-the-fact activities and efforts to contain additional expenses from business disruption and` loss of customers.