More than half of all leaked records in 2019 exposed by financial services companies

Each year, Bitglass analyses the latest trends, the biggest breaches, and the top threats facing financial services organisations. This year’s study found that only 6% of all breaches in 2019 were suffered by financial services companies. However, these breaches compromised significantly more records than those that occurred in other industries. This is at least partially due to the Capital One mega breach, which compromised more than 100 million records.

The top three breaches of financial services firms in 2019 were suffered by Capital One Financial Corporation (106 million individuals), Centerstone Insurance and Financial Services (111,589), and Nassau Educators Federal Credit Union (86,773).

Hacking and malware remain the primary cause of data breaches in financial services at 74.5% (up slightly from 73.5% in 2018). Insider threats grew from 2.9% in 2018 to 5.5% today, while accidental disclosures increased from 14.7% to 18.2%.

The cost per average breached record in financial services (USD 210) has increased over the last few years and exceeds the per-breached-record cost of all other industries except healthcare (USD 429).

For mega breaches, which affect approximately 100M or more individuals, the cost per breached record in financial services is now USD 388 – up from USD 350 in 2018.

Many financial services organisations are still not taking proper steps to secure data in our modern cloud and BYOD environment. Consequently, they are suffering from recurring breaches.