FS-ISAC, a global cyber-intelligence sharing community focused on financial services, has announced that ransomware and supply chain attacks, as well as the resurgence of banking trojans and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, are the top cybersecurity threats to financial institutions across the Asia Pacific (APAC) region.
2021 has seen a steady rise in cross-border cyberattacks perpetrated by increasingly sophisticated threat actors. Based on FS-ISAC member intelligence sharing, open-source intelligence, and insights from local financial firms and other sources, the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center’s (FS-ISAC)’s 2021 Cyber Trends and Threats Review sheds light on current strategic trends in financial services and cybersecurity and offers critical insights into the most salient cyberthreats facing the APAC financial services industry today.
The review also highlights key guidance for how to prepare for emerging cyberthreats in 2022.
“As digitalization of financial services across the APAC region takes place at record speed, firms should be aware of the accompanying pitfalls and take steps to mitigate them,” said Christophe Barel, Managing Director for APAC, FS-ISAC.
“In particular, as the region’s digital shift takes place amid organizational challenges and an under-supply of cybersecurity talent, firms may face the risk that digital expansion could outpace their capacity to adequately protect themselves from emergent cyberthreats. Safeguarding against these threats will require the collective wisdom of the entire industry, with intelligence sharing as a core pillar.”
Current cyberthreats are converging with recent trends in financial services such as the wholesale move to cloud, the emergence of new fintech players competing against traditional financial institutions and mainstream adoption of cryptocurrencies.
As financial institutions (FIs) have had to quickly expand their IT infrastructure to stay competitive, some have found that their cybersecurity apparatus has not scaled up at the same pace.
The FS-ISAC 2021 Cyber Trends and Threats Review also identified other significant trends facing the region, including the strengthening of regulatory oversight of cyber-risk management, organizational challenges to threat response and an acute cybersecurity talent shortage.
As cybersecurity becomes a board-level issue because of the existential risks cyberattacks can pose, financial firms must re-imagine cybersecurity policies and procedures for a new era where the industry is hyperconnected and cyberthreats know no bounds.
“In 2021, third-party risk and ransomware continue to dominate the cyberthreat environment, while the resurgent threats of DDoS and trojans have also reared their heads. Sharing intelligence both globally and among members in the region can help firms understand not only new and emerging tools, techniques and procedures used by cybercriminals but also best practices on how to defend against them,” said Barel.
