2021 Data Risk Report Financial Services

Financial services organizations must safeguard tons of highly sensitive information, but data is often left exposed to far too many people. If just one employee clicks on a phishing email, attackers will move into action fast – and they’ll be able to copy, change, encrypt or delete any files the victim can touch.

To highlight the most common and pervasive issues around enterprise data security, Varonis developed the 2021 Financial Data Risk Report. The new report delves into the state of data security – on-premises, cloud, and hybrid environments – for banking, insurance, and investment companies.

We analyzed a random sample of Data Risk Assessments for 56 companies to uncover how exposed companies really are. Varonis analysts crunched the numbers and examined 4 billion files for the report.

Here are just a few key findings:

• A financial services employee has access to nearly 11 million files. For larger companies, the number doubles to 20 million files.
• 20%of all folders are open to every employee.
• 39%of companies have over 10,000 stale — but enabled — user accounts.
• Nearly two-thirdsof companies have 1,000+ sensitive files open to every employee.
• About 60%of companies have 500+ passwords that never expire.