Several high-profile supply chain attacks in the last year, including SolarWinds, Accellion, Microsoft Exchange, and Kaseya, have shone a spotlight on the cyber security risk of attacks on third-party vendors to financial firms, their customers and the wider financial system.
These events, as well as visible ransomware attacks against other industries and cross-border attacks such as the distributed denial-of-service extortion wave that hit more than 100 financial firms in 2020, did not happen in a vacuum. A convergence of fast-moving trends is transforming financial services: a widespread move to the cloud, new fintech players establishing themselves at par with their traditional counterparts and growing use of cryptocurrencies by institutional and retail investors.
