Guarding the Vault: BCX’s latest cybersecurity solutions for financial institutions

Digital transformation remains an ongoing and nuanced journey for organisations worldwide. As new technologies and services revolutionise enterprises, they also expand the threat landscape and increase the sophistication of threats organisations must deal with.

The South African financial services industry remains a fertile ground for threat actors. According to IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2024, the global financial services industry experienced data breaches totalling over USD 6m, making it the second hardest-hit sector across the board. 

The South African financial system has a long history of incorporating technology and, like many financial systems across the globe, digitalisation has become a strategic priority. To understand the imminent threat that these threat actors pose, it is imperative to appreciate how much financial services are driving digitisation, especially for businesses and consumers. 

Financial institutions often have complex networks, numerous endpoints, and extensive databases, making them more susceptible to vulnerabilities and attack vectors. Cyber criminals exploit these complexities for unauthorised access and data exfiltration.

The prevalence of attacks in the industry can be attributed to a large degree to two causes; the first being cyber criminals being primarily interested in financial gain. Additionally, financial institutions store large amounts of customer data, including payment information, allowing attackers to use stolen information for further attacks on users.

Between 2018 and 2022, the OPERA1ER group carried out more than 35 successful attacks and stole at least USD 11 million from banks and telecommunication providers in several countries, with African banks being the most frequent victims. The total damage from the attacks is estimated at USD 30 million. The cyber criminals aimed to compromise operator accounts with access to significant sums of money, they then used the stolen credentials to transfer funds.

Closer to home, the Chief Information Security Officer of a leading top 5 bank recently shared in an interview that in the last two years, the bank has seen a 400% increase in cyber-attacks, with the number of attacks per month being in the millions.  These attacks vary in sophistication and scope but pose an incredible risk to the bank and overall ecosystem. 

Organisations need to ensure that they pursue holistic cyber security solutions that can effectively respond to cyber threats but can also limit their vulnerabilities by being proactive in nature. Moving the narrative from ‘this is what we do once attacked,’ to ‘this is what we do to avoid attacks.’ 

Due to the high stakes and potential for significant rewards, financial services providers need to invest heavily in cyber security measures now to protect their assets, data, and customer trust. Now more than ever, cyber security and cyber resilience are critical for national financial stability within the South African financial sector. 

“This ongoing cat-and-mouse game between cyber criminals and the financial sector has led to the development of increasingly sophisticated security measures and practices in the industry,” says Bertus Engelbrecht, Acting Managing Executive of Cybersecurity at BCX. 

BCX takes an integrated approach to all aspects of cyber security: expert security and risk management, security architecture and engineering, network security, identity and access management, security operations, asset security, and software development security to deliver full-service peace of mind.

Driven by the ethos of reimagining trust, BCX views security as more than just a technology challenge, but rather as a strategic issue that impacts product capability, organisational effectiveness, and customer relationships. BCX prioritises and protects the trust between your organisation, its shareholders and customers.

BCX offers financial service providers integrated and seamless security every step of their digital journey, with the expertise to secure even the most complex enterprise network. The BCX Threat Defense Centre (TDC) will act as a centralised function within your organisation, employing people, processes, and technology to continuously monitor and improve an organisation’s security posture. This means that BCX provides you with a 360-degree view of your digital landscape. 

Protecting a financial services firm from cyber criminals requires a multifaceted approach that includes a combination of technology, policies, training, and ongoing vigilance.