Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Financial services organizations moving to AWS often discover that retrofitting security and compliance controls costs three to five times more than building them in from the start. Compliance gaps discovered during audits can delay critical initiatives, trigger regulatory scrutiny, and expose organizations to unnecessary risk.

Many financial services IT leaders believe they’re protected against ransomware because they have backups. According to Sophos’ State of Ransomware in Financial Services 2025, 64% of financial services organizations were hit by ransomware in the past year. Of those with backups, a significant percentage discovered their backup infrastructure had been compromised too. Modern ransomware operators don’t just encrypt production data.

Financial services firms face data breach costs 22% higher than the global average. According to IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report, the average breach in financial services now costs $6.08 million, second only to healthcare. Beyond immediate costs of investigation, notification, and remediation, financial services organizations face regulatory penalties, litigation exposure, and lost customer trust.

Financial services firms handling payment card data just ran out of runway. As of March 31, '25, PCI-DSS 4.0 compliance is mandatory. The 64 new requirements that organizations could previously treat as best practices are now enforceable, and auditors are scrutinizing every control. According to Verizon’s 2024 Payment Security Report, only 14.3% of organizations achieved full PCI-DSS compliance during interim assessments. That means most firms are closing gaps while managing day-to-day operations.