While the financial services industry sector is mostly a highly regulated industry, many financial institutes have started to adopt new technologies, such as cloud services, Internet of Things (IoT), or social media, to create new business models and reach new customers. In addition to new technologies, there is an ongoing cost reduction objective to provide shareholder value that is mostly achieved through outsourcing or offshoring. While each of these areas is important for ensuring that the business is growing, it also introduces a new threat landscape for financial institutes. These threats need to be taken into account for any successful IT and security department.

When delving into the financial services threat landscape, it is important to differentiate between end user-facing threats and threats targeted at the financial institute itself. Threats against end users and threats against financial institutes are the threat categories for the financial services industry that will be briefly covered in this chapter.