$5.56M
average cost of a data breach in financial services in 2025
IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025
Why continuous monitoring is critical for a bank
Financial flows have no downtime: an online payment channel or an interbank clearing system stays active around the clock, which means fraud attempts or intrusions can occur at any moment, including outside the hours an in-house IT team is available. Without continuous detection, the gap between a compromise and its discovery can be measured in days — with financial impact growing every hour.
BAM regulation expects financial institutions to detect and escalate security incidents quickly. A managed SOC produces the visibility and traceability needed to meet that expectation — without relieving the institution of its own governance and regulatory reporting obligations.
Concrete risks in banking and finance
Credential stuffing — automated use of credentials stolen from other services to try logging into online banking accounts — remains one of the most common fraud vectors against digital channels. A SOC correlates suspicious login attempts across multiple systems to catch these campaigns before they succeed.
Privileged access (operations, trading, back-office) and third-party connections (fintechs, aggregators, payment providers) widen internal risk exposure. An incident involving a compromised privileged account can go unnoticed for a long time without event correlation across banking systems, identity directories and the network.
What setting up a SOC means for a financial institution
A managed SOC does not replace a bank's in-house IT or security team: it complements it, with detection use cases calibrated to specific banking systems (core banking, digital channels, payment network) rather than generic monitoring. This integration — connecting to application logs, defining the fraud scenarios to watch, and escalation procedures aligned with the institution's governance — takes time and is built in stages.
Coverage does not start at 24/7 on day one: it rolls out progressively, prioritizing the most critical systems first (payment channels, privileged access) before expanding scope, at a pace defined with the institution.
Go further
See the full presentation of SOC & Monitoring or all our solutions for Cybersecurity for Banking & Finance.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
No. A managed SOC complements an in-house IT or security team by adding continuous detection capability that most institutions cannot justify building alone. Governance and response decisions remain coordinated with your teams.