Your bank is probably under attack right now; you just don’t know about it yet.

The financial services sector has the fastest-growing cybersecurity crisis. Data breach costs are reaching $6.08 million, which is 22% higher than in any other industry. The irony is that breaches are a mix of sophisticated attacks and fundamental security mistakes, with the latter responsible for the majority of cases.

Technology evolves, and so do banking systems, striving to catch up and implement cutting-edge solutions. Yet this rapid shift also opens doors for new vulnerabilities that banks may not be fully prepared to manage.

As noted by the DGSSI (Morocco’s General Directorate for Information Systems Security), Moroccan banks are the most affected by cyberattacks in Africa, primarily due to their leading role in digitalization and global internet exposure.

So what are the common mistakes banks make? And how to correctly mitigate them?

Why is cybersecurity crucial in banking?

Banks are huge and complex entities that handle highly sensitive information, making them the prime target for attackers:

• Banks are a source of big data: Personal identities, financial records, sensitive credentials, and transaction histories are all in one place. Those are the golden tokens that attackers seek, as they are monetized and highly valued on the dark web.
• The financial system reflects national stability: This makes it a target for nation-state threat actors beyond financially motivated cybercrime. Not only for profit, but for political or economic influence.
• The banking sector’s digital transformation: The shift is efficient in making banks more convenient for customers, but it also opens new avenues for cyberattacks. Suppose a bank moves its databases to a cloud storage solution to simplify classification, yet with an unsecured API, it makes the data publicly accessible.

Therefore, cybersecurity is a priority, a first line of defense to protect both customers and the stability of the financial system as a whole.

Common mistakes made by banks and how to avoid Them

Insufficient employee and customer awareness

The human factor remains the biggest vulnerability of a banking system. Starting with the expert accounting employee who masters finance but knows little to nothing about security, to the customer who finds it friendly to share his credentials with family.

Phishing and social engineering campaigns often succeed due to the lack of awareness, and we can never expect someone to be cyber vigilant without the right training and effort.

Mitigation advice:

• Invest in continuous training programs for all employees, in IT and other areas.
• Define clear guidelines for handling suspicious communications and cyber response tools to contain the risk and react rapidly.
• Encourage global awareness across all ages and normalize security practices through social media, educational articles, schools, or any other platform.

Moroccan banks are adopting this ideology, with continuous alerting messages and educational content on fraud and phishing. An important step that reflects the growth of awareness, making it clear that every party is responsible for financial security.

Usage of legacy and outdated systems

In large organizations, it’s never easy to upgrade the infrastructure. Those devices are deeply integrated into the processes, and we can’t afford to disrupt the workflow.

Today, banks are not an exception. Many of them operate with legacy applications and servers, which likely means unpatched systems that no longer receive security updates. While they still function, they were made with less security in mind, and so banks are missing new protections, risking more areas.

Mitigation advice:

• Maintain a full asset inventory to keep track, patch, and upgrade systems. This can include network scans, manual audits, and tools to classify all legacy systems.
• Make decisions to upgrade the infrastructure. Even if so deeply integrated, your bank’s security is worth the effort. Replace with modern systems, isolate old ones, or add layered protection and segmentation.
• Prioritize monitoring, continuous logging, and convenient IDS/IPS systems to track alerts and detect anomalies.

This point is an underestimated risk in banking security. It exposes the system to old vulnerabilities and makes it easier for exploits.

Web and mobile application issues

In the digitalization era, banks compete to transition and make their services more accessible and easier. Online account management, online payments, and money transfers are changing the world of finance. Yet, it should never be at the cost of security.

Web applications are still the target due to basic problems: weak authentication, poor access control, session management issues, and web attacks such as SQL injection (to manipulate database queries) or XSS (to steal cookies or users’ identities).

Mitigation advice:

• Use strong multi-factor authentication MFA (and not rely on SMS authentication only)
• Secure coding standards for famous web attacks
• Organize regular penetration testing and audits to test the application in different scenarios
• Have a proven incident response plan for fast, controlled reaction

Blind trust in third-party risk management

Modern banking depends heavily on third parties: cloud service providers, payment processors, fintech partners, outsourced services, etc. If any of these have a weakness or poor management, it becomes a direct failure of your bank.

It is true that third-party offers flexibility by outsourcing functions to companies of expertise. But this also means taking responsibility for all possible vulnerabilities and mistakes of those integrations. In fact, 51% of organizations experience a data breach caused by a third party.

Mitigation advice:

• Verify the vendor’s security posture before onboarding. Check certifications, incident history, and compliance with local laws to prove it’s fully trusted and proven.
• Verify details of how the data will be stored and where, the transfer, the cryptography, and all actions that happen on their end.
• Define responsibilities for incident handling and liabilities, and run periodic security audits to stay in control.
• Apply least-privilege access for vendors, use Zero Trust principles even for trusted suppliers, and segment networks to prevent them from reaching core systems.

Blindly accepting a vendor is like handing them all the cash and credentials on a plate of gold. Vigilance, zero-trust, and periodic checks are the key words here.

And as Abdellatif Jouahri, Wali of Bank Al-Maghrib, emphasized recently, banks must reinforce cyber-resilience and coordinate oversight of third-party providers to reduce risks.

Conclusion

Banks deserve the strongest care and finest security. It holds the economy of a state, the most sensitive information of an individual, and the stability of the future.

Investing in keeping it secure is a step to take now, by following mitigation paths and learning from previous breaches and mistakes, to prepare and avoid risks as much as possible.

Every financial service should adopt this mentality, and if you ask about the very first step you can take now?

Start by knowing where you stand, run a dark web monitoring test to detect fraud, leaked information, leaked credit cards, and upgrade your cyber threat management with Defendis for banks right away!