Half of all Financial Services Cyber Attacks Start with a Very Costly Phish

Trustwave’s 2024 Risk Radar for financial services highlights phishing-driven attacks—often using HTML attachments and stolen credentials—as a dominant and costly threat, with 49% of attacks starting via phishing and phishing/BEC tied as the second most expensive initial vectors at an average $4.9M; recommended mitigations include robust email filtering, layered email security to detect anomalous messages, and ongoing security awareness training and phishing testing.