CTO Advice Logo

Five Steps for Frontier Al Security Readiness

High Stakes and High Value: Navigating Threats to the Financial Services Sector

Adversaries are increasingly targeting the global financial services sector for high-value assets, sensitive data, and customers’ personally identifiable information (PII). As a result, defenders are facing a rise in hands-on-keyboard intrusions driven by diverse motivations.

The CrowdStrike 2026 Financial Services Threat Landscape Report provides an exclusive deep dive into how eCrime and state-sponsored threat actors are evolving — and what organizations can do to stay ahead.

Key insights:

  • Interactive intrusions are rising: Hands-on-keyboard attacks have increased by 43% over the past two years, giving adversaries flexibility to shift from initial access to pursue theft, extortion, or intelligence collection.
  • Ransomware pressure is growing: Big game hunting activity is rising — from April 1, 2025, to March 31, 2026, there was a 27% increase in financial services victims named on dedicated leak sites compared to the previous reporting period, underscoring the sector’s attractiveness for high-value extortion.
  • Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) activity is intensifying: North Korean adversaries have intensified their focus on financial technology (fintech) and cryptocurrency organizations, executing the largest financial theft in history through sophisticated supply chain compromise.
  • China-nexus espionage persists: China-nexus threat actors remain a leading intelligence threat, aggressively targeting PII and economic data during long-term espionage campaigns.

Get the report for the findings you need to protect against threats to the financial services sector

In partnership with

CTO Advice Logo

CTO Advice provides research and guidelines to help technology leaders modernize business infrastructure, scale operations, support teams, and protect corporate data through insights from industry-leading sources.

Property of Advice Brands. © 2026 Advice Brands. All Rights Reserved

Advertiser Disclosure: Some of the products that appear on this site are from companies from which Advice Brands receives compensation. This compensation may impact how and where products appear on this site including, for example, the order in which they appear. Advice Brands does not include all companies or all types of products available in the marketplace.