Safeguard data in finance with these six steps for success

TLDR:

• In 2023, the global average cost of a data breach was $4.45m, with financial services industry facing $5.9m per breach.
• Financial services companies can follow six key steps to protect data and mitigate cyber risks.

With cyber breaches on the rise, financial services companies face increasing pressure to enhance data protection strategies and mitigate cyber risks while complying with regulatory requirements. The article by Alasdair Anderson of Protegrity provides a roadmap for financial organizations to safeguard sensitive data effectively. Here are the key elements:

Six Steps to Protecting Data in Financial Services Companies

In the article, Anderson highlights the following steps that financial services companies can take to protect their data:

1. Protect the data first: Implement a data-centric, zero-trust security posture with fine-grained data protection. Treat all sensitive data the same as critical payment data (PCI-DSS) to make it more difficult for bad actors to acquire critical data.
2. Achieve cross-border compliance: Invest in a security platform that can centralize administration and standardize data protection enforcement policies across state and country borders.
3. Get board-level involvement: Ensure strong executive support for cybersecurity efforts to drive a top-down cultural shift in cybersecurity across the organization.
4. Elevate and empower cybersecurity departments: Empower Security Operations (SecOps) teams with the tools and talent to effectively mitigate and respond to data breaches.
5. Spend smarter, not harder: Invest strategically in end-to-end data protection to safeguard critical data targeted by cybercriminals.
6. Enable privacy-empowered data sharing: Secure data in motion through encryption to prevent unauthorized access and de-identify data with pseudonymization and anonymization for added protection.

Protecting the data of a financial organization is crucial for maintaining customer trust and complying with regulations. By following these steps, companies can enhance their data protection strategies and mitigate cyber risks effectively.