Industry
Banking & Finance
Protecting high-value assets in the highest-threat sector.
Financial institutions are the most targeted organisations on the internet. Nation-state actors, organised criminal groups, and opportunistic attackers all converge on banking and finance — because that's where the money is, and increasingly, where critical national infrastructure lives.
Threat landscape
SWIFT & Interbank Fraud
Attackers who compromise banking infrastructure target SWIFT messaging systems to initiate fraudulent transfers. The 2016 Bangladesh Bank heist ($81M) and subsequent incidents demonstrate that SWIFT compromise is achievable through standard network intrusion techniques when controls are insufficient.
Open Banking API Exploitation
PSD2 and open banking mandates have dramatically expanded the API attack surface of financial institutions. Broken Object Level Authorisation (BOLA) vulnerabilities in open banking APIs allow attackers to access account data and initiate payments on behalf of arbitrary customers — without any user interaction.
Insider Threat & Privilege Abuse
Financial services employees have elevated access to customer data, transaction systems, and trading platforms. Privilege abuse — whether through malicious intent or compromised credentials — is a top-three incident type for financial institutions globally.
ATM & Payment Terminal Attacks
Physical and logical attacks against ATM networks, POS terminals, and card payment infrastructure remain prevalent. Black box attacks (physical device manipulation), jackpotting, and network-based ATM exploitation are active threat vectors targeting retail banking.
Advanced Persistent Threat Intrusion
Nation-state threat actors (Lazarus Group, APT38, Carbanak) specifically target financial institutions for intelligence gathering and fraud. These actors use sophisticated tooling, living-off-the-land techniques, and patient long-term access to evade detection while pursuing high-value objectives.
Compliance & regulations
Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard — mandatory for any organisation that processes, stores, or transmits cardholder data. Requires annual penetration testing, quarterly network scans, and continuous security monitoring.
SWIFT Customer Security Programme — mandatory controls for all SWIFT network participants. Requires independent assessment of mandatory controls annually.
Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act Safeguards Rule — requires financial institutions to develop, implement, and maintain a comprehensive information security programme.
Reserve Bank of India IT Framework for Banks — mandates periodic VAPT, IS audit, and incident response capability for all RBI-regulated entities.
International standard for information security management. Required by many institutional counterparties and regulators as evidence of security programme maturity.
Recommended UnlockSec services
Services most relevant to the Banking & Finance threat landscape.
Why UnlockSec for Banking & Finance
01
Regulatory evidence ready
Every deliverable is structured to satisfy PCI-DSS QSA requirements, RBI IT Framework audit needs, and ISO 27001 assessment evidence — reducing your compliance overhead, not adding to it.
02
Financial sector threat intelligence
Our operators track financial sector threat actors — Lazarus, Carbanak, FIN7, and regional criminal groups — and tailor attack scenarios to the specific techniques targeting your institution type and region.
03
Zero operational disruption
Testing windows, impact thresholds, and rollback procedures are agreed during scoping. Our operators have extensive experience testing production financial systems without service interruption.
Sample engagement
Anonymised case study — Confidential — Mid-size private bank, South Asia
Challenge
The bank had recently launched an open banking API programme and received a regulatory mandate to conduct an independent security assessment before expanding to enterprise clients. They had no existing penetration testing programme and were uncertain about their API security posture.
Approach
UnlockSec conducted a combined VAPT and API Security assessment over 12 business days. The API assessment focused on OWASP API Top 10 with particular attention to BOLA — the most common open banking vulnerability class. The VAPT covered the bank's core banking system network perimeter and internal segmentation.
Outcome
3 Critical and 6 High severity findings were identified, including a BOLA vulnerability in the account information API allowing access to any customer's transaction history via parameter manipulation. All critical findings were remediated and verified within 21 days. The bank passed their subsequent regulatory review.
Client details redacted. Engagement details accurate.
Banking & Finance Security
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