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Financial Services Leads as Prime Target for Cyber Criminals, Study Finds

By Marcos Colon

Online criminals may go after the low-hanging fruit first, but at the end of the day it’s all about the money as one recent study suggests.

The IBM X-Force Threat Intelligence Index found that financial services tops the list of industry-specific targets by cyber criminals, where attacks increased 29 percent, from 1,3010 in 2015 to 1,684 in 2016.

The industry also experienced Increases in breach and vulnerability disclosures, in addition to distributed denial-of-service attacks via Internet of Things botnets (such as Mirai).

Most attacks against financial services organizations come from inside the organization (58 percent) versus external attacks (42 percent). Of those insider-born attacks, 53 percent come from non-malicious insiders, rather than malicious insiders that act against the organization, according to the study.

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