Cyber Risks Remain for Financial Firms, Even Outside Their Defenses

September 27, 2018 by Daniel Taub and Francine Lacqua

The biggest financial firms see significant risk from cyber attacks, even if their companies aren’t the ones being targeted.

While banks and asset managers have spent billions on cybersecurity, they still remain vulnerable from attacks on other sectors, like state governments that possess individuals’ Social Security numbers, BlackRock Inc. Chief Executive Officer Larry Fink said at at the Bloomberg Global Business Forum in New York on Wednesday.

“If there are going to be cyber attacks, it is probably going to be organizations that have underspent on technology,” Fink said. While “the financial sector has been under such scrutiny because of the financial crisis, it is one of the sectors that is doing as much as it can.”

David Solomon, the incoming CEO of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., said cyber attacks are on his list of “things that can really go wrong” as he takes the top job next week.

“It’s a big issue that probably doesn’t get as much attention as it deserves, even though I say it gets a lot of attention,” he said.