BFSI and Security: Will The Wine Glass Stay?

Being especially fragile to security blows, the need for extra care on collaboration, collective intelligence and insider threat mitigation only grows higher and higher for BFSI. Is the duct tape coming in?

- Pratima H

Always labeled 'fragile'. Always stamped with the 'take extra care' sticker. Always the box with a wine glass logo even when 'feet-up' and 'hairdown' moments are so rare in this industry. It had to be. BFSI holds so much sensitive, important and valuable data that it just cannot afford to be thrown around carelessly. More so, when the data inside has become more and more fluid and seamless in the digital age.

With INR 2086 trillion in Digital payments value in FY 2022-2025, security cannot be shrugged away with minimal tick-boxes on this box for sure. According to a Data Security Council of India (DSCI) December 2023 report, BFSI spending on cybersecurity grew from USD 518 million in 2019 to USD 1,738 million in 2023. As per DSCI's survey, 84 percent of the respondents reported digital transformation as a critical driver for the increase in cybersecurity investment. There has been a surge in RaaS incidents, the use of AI/ML to automate attacks and avoid detection, DDoS attacks, and coordinated group cyberattacks. From 2018 to June 2023, CERT-In reported 62 and 191 incidents of data leak and data breach, respectively. Let's not forget that now threat actors are also leveraging GenAI for advanced malware creation, Al-powered phishing emails, and deepfake generation. AI/ML is being used for brute-force attacks, password guessing, and flooding a security system with a multitude of inaccurate positives.

The rising incidence, complexity and ruthlessness of cyber-attacks and ransomware threats raise an important question. What if BFSI enterprises turned towards collective intelligence? Could things get better when insiders were strapped with more styrofoam of awareness? Especially when Failure to comply with the DPDP Act 2023 may result in fines of up to INR 250 crore. And when the average data breach cost has been rising by 28 percent since 2020, reaching INR 179 million at one point? Let's ask some experts.