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The potential financial, operational, and reputational impact of ransomware make it the top threat facing financial services organizations, according to a new report from cyber security provider F-Secure.

Phishing, exposed remote desktop protocol (RDP) ports, and the exploitation of vulnerable software, are called out as the three most common principal intrusion vectors for ransomware. The report also notes that the scale and sophistication of ransomware attacks have increased in the last two years.

And while the report forecasts that ransomware will remain a predominant threat for at least the next 12 months, it also highlights defensive strategies that can help reduce the impact of ransomware attacks.

Even though financial services organizations consider ransomware to be the top threat, the report found that supply chains and cloud security were key areas of concern. The report lists several reasons justifying organizations’ concerns with these areas but identifies the spread of capabilities from nation-state threats to cyber criminals as a common development for both.

Other findings discussed in the report include:

– Financial services organizations are struggling to manage vulnerabilities in their infrastructure. The exploitation of vulnerabilities is a key vector in many high-impact intrusions by both state-sponsored threat actors and cyber criminals.

– Technologies such as SWIFT, Open Banking, and ATMs present an ongoing risk to financial organizations as offensive techniques deployed against these technologies evolve. Financially motivated state-backed groups continue to conduct ATM cashouts, fraudulent abuse of compromised bank-operated SWIFT system endpoints, and cryptocurrency theft.

– Cryptocurrency related attacks have increased, making it important for central banks to secure digital currency infrastructure (particularly as they increase their cryptocurrency holdings and roll out their own digital currencies).