60d
Remediation
Deadline Met
$25M
largest documented single
deepfake wire fraud loss
deepfake wire fraud loss
36hr
OCC/FDIC breach notification
deadline for banking orgs
deadline for banking orgs
65%
of financial breaches involve
stolen or weak credentials
stolen or weak credentials
#1
most targeted industry for
financially-motivated attacks
financially-motivated attacks
The Threat Landscape Facing Financial Services Organizations
Financial services organizations face a set of threats that are more targeted, more persistent, and more technically sophisticated than most industries encounter. The threat actors know the industry well, they understand how financial systems work, and they invest significant resources in identifying and exploiting weaknesses.
Sophisticated Financial Fraud & Account Takeover
Account takeover attacks against financial institutions have evolved well beyond simple credential stuffing. Organized criminal groups combine stolen credential databases, behavioral analysis tools, and automation to identify and exploit accounts in ways that bypass standard fraud detection. Business Email Compromise targeting financial operations teams has resulted in nine-figure fraud losses across the industry. Wire fraud schemes now routinely use multi-stage social engineering combined with technical access to make fraudulent transfers appear operationally legitimate until after the funds have moved and been dispersed through multiple accounts.
Ransomware Targeting Operational Continuity
Ransomware groups have identified financial services as a high-value target not just for extortion revenue but because operational disruption creates immediate customer impact, regulatory exposure, and reputational damage that increases pressure to pay. Double extortion tactics: where attackers both encrypt systems and threaten to publish stolen customer financial data: are now standard among the major ransomware groups active in financial services. The combination of operational disruption and regulatory breach notification obligations creates compounding pressure that can persist for months after an attack.
Third-Party & Supply Chain Exposure
Financial institutions depend on extensive ecosystems of third-party technology providers, payment processors, cloud infrastructure vendors, and outsourced service providers. Each of these relationships represents a potential entry point for attackers who understand that compromising a widely used financial technology vendor can provide simultaneous access to dozens of financial institutions that would each be individually difficult to breach directly. The actual security state of vendor ecosystems is often significantly weaker than the financial institution's own environment, creating a gap that sophisticated attackers actively exploit.
Weak Access Controls & Credential Exposure
In small financial services organizations, inadequate access controls are among the most commonly exploited vulnerabilities. Staff sharing system credentials, former employees retaining active access to client financial data, and no formal process for reviewing or removing permissions over time are standard conditions in firms that have never had a formal security review. Attackers who obtain a single set of credentials: through phishing, password reuse from an unrelated breach, or social engineering: can often access client account data, financial records, and administrative systems with minimal resistance.
How AI Is Being Used to Attack Financial Services Organizations
Artificial intelligence has materially changed what attackers targeting financial services are capable of. AI removes the scale limitations that previously constrained sophisticated attacks, allows fraud and social engineering to operate at volumes that manual techniques could never achieve, and enables adaptive intrusion approaches that respond to defensive measures in real time.
AI-Generated Fraud at Scale
AI tools are being used to generate synthetic identities, fabricate supporting documentation, and automate the account opening and fraud workflows that previously required significant human effort per attack. Machine learning models trained on successful fraud patterns are used to optimize attack sequences against specific financial institutions, identifying combinations of account activity that avoid triggering fraud detection while successfully completing fraudulent transactions. The volume of AI-enabled fraud attempts targeting financial institutions has increased by orders of magnitude compared to what manual fraud operations could sustain.
Deepfake-Enabled Financial Social Engineering
Deepfake audio and video are now being used in real-time financial fraud scenarios. Documented cases include criminals using cloned voice technology to impersonate CFOs authorizing emergency wire transfers, impersonating bank representatives in calls to corporate treasury teams, and conducting fraudulent video verification calls that satisfy KYC procedures using AI-generated faces. The social engineering attacks that previously required human actors who could speak convincingly are now being executed by AI systems that can maintain a convincing impersonation through an entire conversation or video call.
Autonomous Agent-Based Intrusion into Financial Systems
AI attack agents can conduct multi-stage intrusions into financial infrastructure without requiring human operators to direct each step. These agents conduct reconnaissance against financial institution environments, identify exploitable vulnerabilities in internet-facing systems, establish initial access, and move laterally toward high-value targets including core banking system access, payment infrastructure, and administrative credentials. The speed of these attacks removes the window that financial institutions previously relied on to detect and interrupt an intrusion before it reached critical systems.
AI-Powered Spear-Phishing Targeting Financial Staff
Financial services employees in treasury, wire operations, and executive functions receive AI-generated spear-phishing attacks personalized using data assembled from LinkedIn, company websites, regulatory filings, press releases, and prior breach datasets. Emails referencing specific transactions, counterparties, or internal processes that an employee recognizes are significantly more likely to succeed than generic phishing attempts. AI-generated spear-phishing targeting financial staff can be produced at scale, meaning that hundreds of employees across an institution can receive individually personalized attacks simultaneously.
How We Help Small Financial Services Organizations
Our work in financial services is built around organizations that do not have large security teams: independent advisors, credit unions, accounting firms, insurance agencies, and small fintechs that need real security and real compliance without the overhead of enterprise-scale programs. We start with access control and build the rest of the program around your actual regulatory obligations and threat exposure.
Identity & Access Management for Financial Services
We fix the access control gaps that create the most risk in small financial services environments: shared credentials across client-facing systems, over-privileged staff accounts, no formal offboarding process, and no audit trail for who accessed client financial data. We implement role-based access controls, MFA across all financial and administrative systems, and automated provisioning and deprovisioning that ensures access is removed promptly when staff leave or change roles. The access framework we build directly addresses the GLBA Safeguards Rule's specific requirements around access controls, authentication, and access review.
Learn MoreFinancial Services Security Assessment & Gap Analysis
We assess your security program against the frameworks that matter for your specific regulatory profile: GLBA Safeguards Rule, PCI DSS, or SOC 2 depending on what you handle and who you serve. Assessments are scoped for small organizations and go beyond control checklists to evaluate whether your actual security posture addresses the threats active in financial services today. Findings are mapped to your applicable regulatory requirements so the assessment serves both security improvement and compliance gap documentation in a single engagement.
Learn MoreFinancial Services Penetration Testing
We test the attack paths used against financial institutions, including customer-facing application vulnerabilities, payment processing system weaknesses, internal network access from compromised endpoints, and the social engineering scenarios that have succeeded against financial staff in documented campaigns. Testing covers web and mobile banking applications, APIs connecting financial systems, internal network segmentation, and the specific authentication weaknesses that fraud operations target. Results are mapped to applicable regulatory requirements.
Learn MorePCI DSS Compliance Program
We help organizations that process, store, or transmit cardholder data meet PCI DSS requirements through gap assessment, remediation support, and preparation for QSA assessment. Our approach treats PCI compliance as a security improvement exercise, not a documentation exercise. This means we focus on the controls that actually reduce cardholder data breach risk alongside the documentation requirements that auditors expect, so your PCI program produces both compliance status and genuine security improvement.
Learn MoreSOC 2 Compliance for Financial Technology
Fintech companies and financial technology vendors are increasingly required by their financial institution customers to demonstrate SOC 2 compliance before contracts are signed or renewed. We build the security controls, operational procedures, and documentation infrastructure required for SOC 2 Type I and Type II audit readiness, working with your audit firm or helping you select one. Our approach prioritizes building security controls that are operationally functional for a technology company environment, not just audit-ready on paper.
Learn MoreAI Threat Defense for Financial Services
We help financial services organizations defend against AI-powered fraud, deepfake social engineering, and autonomous agent-based intrusion attempts targeting financial infrastructure. This includes behavioral AI detection tuned to financial system activity patterns, verification protocol updates that account for deepfake voice and video capabilities, and AI-powered email analysis that evaluates spear-phishing attempts at a level of sophistication that signature-based tools cannot match.
Learn MoreThreat Detection & SOC Services for Financial Institutions
Financial institutions require continuous monitoring that understands what normal financial system activity looks like and what deviations signal genuine threats. Our SOC and threat detection services for financial services are tuned to financial system activity patterns, covering core banking activity, payment system monitoring, privileged access behavior, and the lateral movement patterns that precede major financial institution breaches. We provide 24/7 coverage without requiring you to build and staff that capability internally.
Learn MoreHow We Use AI to Protect Financial Services Organizations
AI-powered defenses are not optional in financial services anymore. The volume, speed, and sophistication of AI-enabled financial attacks cannot be matched by security operations that rely entirely on human analysts reviewing alerts one at a time. We integrate machine learning capabilities into our financial services security work to address the specific challenges of monitoring complex financial environments.
Behavioral AI Tuned to Financial System Activity
Financial systems have complex and highly variable activity patterns that generic behavioral baselines do not capture accurately. We deploy machine learning models trained on your specific environment to establish accurate behavioral baselines for each user and system type, allowing genuine anomalies: such as administrative access to payment systems outside normal hours or bulk customer data queries from an unfamiliar device: to be distinguished from normal operational variation without generating the false positive volume that undermines alert response.
AI-Accelerated Incident Investigation
When a potential breach or fraud event occurs, financial institutions face immediate pressure to determine scope, contain the incident, and meet regulatory notification timelines. AI-assisted investigation tools compress the time required to reconstruct what happened, identify which customer accounts or financial data were accessed, and trace activity through interconnected financial systems. This is particularly important for financial institutions operating across complex environments where manual investigation can take weeks that regulatory timelines do not provide.
AI-Powered Detection of AI-Generated Fraud Attempts
Traditional fraud detection rules were designed for human-generated fraud patterns. AI-generated fraud is designed specifically to avoid those patterns. We use AI-driven analysis to identify the statistical signatures of AI-generated fraud attempts, including synthetic identity characteristics, behavioral patterns that are too consistent to be human, and document forgery indicators that human reviewers miss under normal operational volume. Defending against AI-generated fraud requires detection systems that can operate at the same level of sophistication as the attacks they are looking for.
Predictive Threat Intelligence for Financial Services
We use AI-driven threat intelligence to monitor which threat actors are actively targeting financial services, what vulnerabilities and techniques they are currently using, and how their tactics compare to your environment's specific exposure profile. Financial sector threat intelligence includes monitoring of criminal forums and marketplaces where financial institution credentials and access are bought and sold, tracking of ransomware group activity against financial institutions, and analysis of the specific pressures that threat actors use to time and calibrate their attacks.
Regulatory & Compliance Requirements for Financial Services
Financial services is one of the most heavily regulated industries for data security and operational resilience. The regulatory landscape varies significantly based on institution type, the products and services offered, the jurisdictions of operation, and the types of customer data handled. Understanding what each framework actually requires is the starting point for building a compliance program that satisfies regulators without duplicating effort across overlapping requirements.
PCI DSS
The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard applies to any organization that processes, stores, or transmits payment cardholder data. PCI DSS v4.0, which became fully effective in 2025, introduced significant new requirements around customized implementation approaches, targeted risk analysis, and authenticated scanning. Non-compliance can result in fines, increased transaction fees, and loss of the ability to process card payments, which is existential for most financial services businesses that handle card transactions.
View PCI DSS Compliance ServicesGLBA Safeguards Rule
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act Safeguards Rule, as updated by the FTC in 2023, requires financial institutions under FTC jurisdiction to implement a comprehensive information security program including a qualified individual overseeing the program, a written risk assessment, specific technical safeguards including multi-factor authentication and encryption, a vendor management program, and an incident response plan. Financial institutions that have not updated their programs since the 2023 amendments may have significant compliance gaps.
DORA (Digital Operational Resilience Act)
The EU's Digital Operational Resilience Act applies to financial entities operating in EU member states and the ICT third-party providers that serve them. DORA requirements, which became applicable in January 2025, cover ICT risk management, incident reporting, digital operational resilience testing including threat-led penetration testing for significant institutions, third-party ICT risk management, and information sharing arrangements. Financial institutions with EU operations need DORA-compliant programs that are materially more prescriptive than general risk management frameworks.
SOC 2 & Financial Institution Customer Requirements
SOC 2 Type II certification has become a standard contractual requirement for technology vendors serving financial institutions. Banks, investment firms, and insurance companies require their technology providers to demonstrate third-party validated security controls before and during vendor relationships. Financial technology companies that do not have current SOC 2 certification face increasing friction in sales cycles with financial institution customers and may be removed from consideration before those conversations even begin.
View SOC 2 Compliance ServicesWhy Financial Services Organizations Choose garrisonOne
- We Understand Financial System Architecture: Recommending security controls for a financial institution requires understanding how core banking systems, payment rails, trading platforms, and customer-facing applications actually work. We bring that knowledge into every engagement rather than applying generic security frameworks to environments we do not understand at an operational level.
- Multi-Framework Compliance Without Duplication: Financial services organizations often operate under multiple overlapping regulatory frameworks simultaneously. We build integrated compliance programs that satisfy PCI DSS, GLBA, DORA, and SOC 2 requirements through a unified security control set rather than running separate workstreams for each framework.
- AI Fraud and Threat Expertise: AI-enabled financial fraud and AI-powered intrusion into financial systems are active and growing threats, not future concerns. We bring current knowledge of how these attacks operate against financial institutions and the specific defensive measures that are effective against them, not generic AI security advice that does not account for the financial services context.
- Third-Party Risk Management Built for Financial Services: Financial institution third-party risk requirements are among the most demanding of any industry. We help you assess vendor security posture, structure contractual security requirements, and build ongoing monitoring programs that satisfy regulatory expectations.
- Breach Response That Meets Financial Regulatory Timelines: Financial regulators have specific and short incident reporting timelines. Our incident response capabilities are designed to compress the investigation and scoping process so your team has the information needed to meet regulatory notification obligations before those deadlines expire.
- Practical for Fintechs, Credible for Large Institutions: We work across the full spectrum of financial services, from early-stage fintechs building their first security program to established financial institutions that need specialized assessment, testing, or advisory support. Engagements are scoped to your organization's actual scale and complexity.
Case Study: Financial Services IAM
35-Person Accounting Firm: Full IAM Implementation & M365 Migration
A 35-person accounting firm had staff sharing credentials across client portals and financial systems, no MFA, and no formal offboarding process: discovered only when a departing employee's access wasn't removed for three weeks. We built individual accounts with role-based access for every user, implemented MFA across all systems including M365, and delivered a process the practice manager runs without IT support.
Read the Full Case Study
100%
Individual
Accounts
Accounts
MFA
All Systems
Covered
Covered
<1 day
Offboarding
Process
Process
Zero
Shared
Credentials
Credentials
Our payment processor flagged us for PCI DSS deficiencies and we had 60 days to remediate or lose card processing. garrisonOne scoped our cardholder data environment correctly, implemented the required controls, and got us through our QSA assessment with a week to spare. The relationship has since expanded to full managed security.
Related Services: Penetration Testing | Compliance Services | Identity & Access Management | Managed SOC | Cloud Security | All Industries
See How We Have Helped Similar Organisations
Full IAM Overhaul for Accounting Firm
Financial Services: Automated provisioning across 14 systems, MFA sitewide
Read Case StudyWeb App Penetration Test
Retail/Financial: PCI DSS scope with 23 vulnerabilities found and fixed
Read Case StudyFrequently Asked Questions
Does PCI DSS apply to us if we use a third-party payment processor?
Using a third-party payment processor reduces your PCI DSS scope but does not eliminate it. Even when a processor handles the actual card data, your organization must still meet PCI DSS requirements relevant to the way you interact with payment systems and the networks that connect to them. The applicable Self-Assessment Questionnaire type depends on exactly how your systems interact with cardholder data. Most organizations that assume they are completely out of scope because they use a third-party processor are surprised to learn they still have compliance obligations.
What are the most important GLBA Safeguards Rule changes that took effect in 2023?
The 2023 FTC Safeguards Rule amendments introduced several requirements that were not in the original version: a designated qualified individual responsible for the information security program, a formal written risk assessment, multi-factor authentication for financial systems access, encryption of customer financial data, penetration testing and vulnerability scanning requirements, a vendor management program, and an incident response plan with specific response procedures. Financial institutions that had not updated their programs since before 2023 likely have compliance gaps in multiple of these areas.
What does DORA require that our current compliance program does not cover?
DORA introduces requirements that go significantly beyond general cybersecurity risk management. The most commonly missing elements for organizations adapting existing programs include the ICT-specific risk management framework requirements, the structured incident classification and reporting obligations with specific regulatory timelines, the mandatory Threat-Led Penetration Testing requirement for significant institutions, the detailed ICT third-party risk management requirements including concentration risk assessment, and the information sharing obligations. Organizations with existing ISO 27001 or NIST CSF-based programs have a foundation to build from but should not assume their existing controls satisfy DORA without a gap assessment.
Are deepfake-based financial fraud attacks actually happening, or is this still theoretical?
Deepfake financial fraud is active and documented. Publicly reported incidents include a multinational company that lost $25 million when a finance employee was convinced to authorize wire transfers during a video conference where the CFO and other colleagues were deepfake impersonations. Voice cloning technology has been used in multiple documented cases to impersonate executives in phone calls authorizing fraudulent transfers. These are not theoretical attack scenarios: they are techniques that criminal groups are currently deploying against financial organizations with measurable success.
How do we manage third-party vendor security risk when we have hundreds of vendors?
Third-party risk management at scale requires a tiered approach based on how much access each vendor has to your financial systems, customer data, and critical infrastructure. Vendors with direct access to financial systems, customer data, or network connectivity into your environment should be assessed with security questionnaires, independent security certifications review, and for critical vendors, direct assessment. Lower-risk vendors warrant lighter-touch monitoring. The key is maintaining an accurate inventory of what each vendor can access and ensuring that access is reassessed when relationships change.
How quickly do financial regulators expect breach notification?
Notification timelines vary by regulator and jurisdiction. The OCC, Federal Reserve, and FDIC require banking organizations to notify their primary federal regulator as soon as possible and no later than 36 hours after determining that a notification incident has occurred. The FTC Safeguards Rule requires notification to the FTC within 30 days of discovering a breach affecting 500 or more customers. State breach notification laws have their own timelines, typically between 30 and 90 days. Financial institutions operating across jurisdictions must be prepared to meet the most restrictive applicable timeline.
What is SOC 2 and why do our bank customers keep requiring it?
SOC 2 is an audit standard developed by the AICPA that evaluates a service organization's controls relevant to security, availability, processing integrity, confidentiality, and privacy. A SOC 2 Type II report demonstrates that your security controls were not just designed correctly but were actually operating effectively over an audit period. Financial institutions require it from vendors because it provides independent third-party validation that your organization has implemented and maintained security controls, satisfying their own third-party risk management obligations.
Can one security assessment satisfy requirements under multiple frameworks like PCI DSS, GLBA, and SOC 2?
A well-scoped assessment can produce findings and documentation that support multiple compliance frameworks simultaneously, but the requirements of each framework are distinct enough that a single assessment will rarely satisfy all of them completely without intentional design. PCI DSS has specific testing requirements, GLBA requires specific risk assessment elements, and SOC 2 requires an audit by a CPA firm. We design assessment work to capture evidence and findings that map to multiple applicable frameworks wherever possible, which significantly reduces the overall compliance workload compared to running entirely separate programs for each requirement.
More Industries We Serve
Manufacturing
OT/IT security, CMMC compliance, and ransomware preparedness for manufacturers.
Retail & E-Commerce
PCI DSS compliance, e-commerce skimmer prevention, and payment security.
Legal
Wire fraud prevention, client data protection, and bar association compliance for law firms.
SaaS
SOC 2, cloud security, and enterprise security review support for software companies.
Nonprofit
Right-sized security programs protecting donor data and grant compliance.
Energy & Utilities
OT/ICS security, NERC CIP compliance, and critical infrastructure protection.
Real Estate
Wire fraud prevention and client data protection for brokerages and property managers.
Technology
SOC 2, product security, and investor due diligence preparation for tech companies.
Resources
Company
Contact
- US: 4752 Euclid Rd Suite 11,
Virginia Beach, VA 23462 - India: Orchard Street, Sector 61,
Gurgaon, Haryana - Phone: (301) 825-5518
- info@garrisonone.com
