McAfee report: 73 percent of FIs use over 25 cybersecurity tools

Closing the Cybersecurity Gaps in Financial Services, a global survey from Ovum and sponsored by McAfee, shows that a high number of financial institutions, especially Tier1 and 2, use over 100-200 different security solutions. The report also finds that 3% of global finances services deploy over 100 security solutions.

The high number of tools and the lack of a centralized system slow down response time and create additional operating costs, while increasing the company’s exposure to cyberattacks.

Moreover, 37% of respondents said that they have to manage over 200,000 daily security alerts. This means that security teams are overwhelmed by the multiple security alarms that they get from the numerous tools that financial institutions use. Many of these security solutions operate independently of each other and lack the intelligence sharing methods that could make them effective.

Financial institutions have to handle petabytes of data and billions of messages across a wide and complex interconnected network. This makes cybersecurity and better fraud management a high priority for them. The Ovum study confirms these worries as 40% of respondents named faster threat discovery their first or second security priority. Financial institutions, however, are taking steps towards improving their cyber security – 70% of companies are planning investments in cloud, web an ATM security.

The report also highlights a shift in the decision making process for cybersecurity initiatives. 48% of correspondents from the fraud team reported they were a decision make in their company’s cybersecurity initiatives.

Major financial breaches continue to be a main concern for most financial institutions. The report’s authors believe that greater automation, integration and management are necessary first steps to provide relief to security teams. These functionalities can only be delivered through a unified threat defence architecture.