The finance and banking sector across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) faces extraordinary cybersecurity challenges, according to KnowBe4’s Cyber Risk in Finance and Banking Across EMEA report. While digital transformation has revolutionized operations and customer engagement, it has also created vulnerabilities that threaten the stability of the entire financial system.

In the complex ecosystem of financial services, some of the greatest threats come from within. While cybersecurity for financial institutions often focuses on external threat actors, the reality is that insider risks—whether intentional or accidental—pose an equally dangerous challenge to regulatory compliance and organizational integrity.

In the high-stakes world of financial services, trust is the cornerstone of every client relationship. But here's the challenge that keeps financial leaders up at night: how do you maintain the stringent security clients demand while delivering the rapid response they expect? It's a delicate balancing act that has become increasingly complex in our digital-first world.

The financial services industry operates in one of the most heavily regulated environments in the business world. With sensitive client data flowing through every transaction and communication, financial institutions face an increasingly complex web of compliance requirements that can make or break their operations. Traditional approaches to data governance simply aren't cutting it anymore.