Ransomware Hits 65% of Financial Firms in 2024

The financial industry continues to be a prime target for cybercriminals, who exploit its vast financial holdings and sensitive data. Recent statistics reveal that in 2024, 65% of financial organizations were affected by ransomware attacks, making it the most targeted sector. The average cost of recovery, excluding ransom payments, has reached $2.73 million.

Escalating Cyber Threats

Banks, insurers, and fintech companies have faced a surge in cyberattacks, predominantly through phishing, ransomware, and data breaches. Sandbox analysis shows that phishing is the root cause of 90% of attacks, emphasizing the critical need for rapid behavioral insights. Platforms like ANY.RUN, utilized by over 15,000 organizations, play a pivotal role in this regard.

Despite increasing investments in security, nearly one-third of attacks still manage to evade traditional defenses, according to Picus Security’s Blue Report. The efficiency of prevention measures remains between 62-69%. Additionally, there has been a 20% rise in stolen credit card listings on underground markets, reaching 14.5 million in 2024, further threatening transactional security.

Operational and Financial Impact

The consequences of these cyber threats are significant, leading to operational disruptions, regulatory fines, and a loss of customer confidence. Even minor delays in threat detection can result in substantial costs. Financial institutions are urged to enhance their defenses by integrating actionable intelligence from a network of 15,000 organizations.

Traditional security operations centers (SOCs) in the financial sector, equipped with SIEM, EDR, and email gateways, are often overwhelmed by alert fatigue and delayed threat visibility. Analysts spend excessive time validating indicators without timely intelligence, increasing the mean time to response (MTTR), costs, and exposing vulnerabilities in rapidly evolving threats.

Advancing Threat Intelligence

ANY.RUN’s Threat Intelligence solutions address these challenges by offering sandbox-powered feeds and lookups to bolster proactive defenses. These Threat Intelligence Feeds, sourced from a community of 600,000 professionals, provide contextual indicators of compromise (IOCs) that integrate seamlessly with SIEM/SOAR systems via APIs and STIX/TAXII protocols.

This approach results in a 36% boost in detection rates, fewer false positives, and quicker triage, enabling early mitigation of finance-specific threats, such as Lumma Stealer campaigns in Europe and the US.

The Threat Intelligence Lookup tool delivers immediate insights on over 40 types of IOCs, reducing MTTR by 21 minutes by offering a comprehensive view of attack chains. For example, querying specific domains exposes connections to active threats, allowing for industry-specific, real-time threat monitoring.

By adopting these tools, SOCs transition from reactive to proactive threat management, enhancing their detection rules and coverage before alerts are triggered. The integration of these technologies fosters resilience by lowering breach risks, ensuring compliance with standards like PCI DSS and DORA, and reducing operational costs through efficient forensics.

ANY.RUN’s ecosystem, which includes malware sandboxes for various operating systems, empowers analysts globally to maintain robust security postures, safeguarding revenue against persistent cyber threats.