Cybercrime Costs for Financial Sector up 40% Since 2014

Financial services companies spend more on cyber incident response, on average, than any other industry, and the amount they spend per incident has swelled by 40% over the past three years, according to a new study. 

The Cost of Cybercrime Study, released Tuesday by Accenture and the Ponemon Institute, focuses on direct costs of incident response, not long-term remediation. According to the report, the finance sector's average per incident cost increased from $12.97 million in 2014 to $18.28 million in 2017; well above the 2017 average of all other industries at $11.7 million.

Nevertheless, the financial services industry continues to lead the way when it comes to their cybersecurity programs.          

"While the cost of cybercrime for financial services companies continues to rise, our research found that these companies have considerably more balanced and appropriate spending levels on key security technologies to combat sophisticated attacks than do those in other industries," Chris Thompson, a senior managing director at Accenture, said in a statement. "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."

In fact, the types of attacks that caused the financial services industry the most trouble were those that are as yet difficult to solve with technology, or have recently made advances in sophistication. While malware attacks were among the least costly for financial services at $5.46 million per incident on average, malicious insiders cost $169 million, phishing/social engineering cost $196.6 million, and denial-of-service attacks $227.7 million.

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