Every Minute Matters: Why Secure Collaboration Is Mission-Critical in Finance 

In today’s digital-first world, cyber risk has become reputational risk — especially for financial services institutions. After all, a single breach can erode customer trust, invite regulatory scrutiny, spook investors, and take a huge bite out of the bottom line. 

According to a 2024 report, 77% of financial services firms experienced a cyberattack within the previous 12 months compared to 68% of organizations in other industries. This shouldn’t come as a surprise; hackers target financial services firms because they have exactly what cybercriminals want: money, sensitive personal data, and access to high-value systems that can be exploited for financial gain. 

But stakeholders aren’t just concerned about whether a breach occurs. They’re watching how institutions respond. Customers, regulators, and investors now expect financial services firms to have airtight security controls, seamless cross-functional coordination, and real-time communication when incidents happen so they can be rapidly resolved. 

This shift has placed secure collaboration at the heart of modern financial services. It’s not just about protecting sensitive data. It’s about accelerating incident response, maintaining compliance, and preserving stakeholder trust — perhaps the most important business driver. According to Forrester’s Financial Services Customer Trust Index, 93% of customers would recommend a bank they have high trust in; on the flipside, just 39% of customers with low trust would do the same. 

With attacks on the rise and customer trust becoming the holy grail of financial services, institutions must transform how they work together. Secure, rapid collaboration between teams — from compliance to cybersecurity to customer services — is essential for preventing failures, managing crises, and maintaining the confidence of the people who matter most. 

The Financial Services CISO Reality Check: 3 Core Threats to Operational Confidence 

For CISOs in financial services, the pressure’s never been higher. The stakes extend far beyond IT; cybersecurity is now a board-level concern, a regulatory requirement, and a pillar of customer trust. 

Yet despite heavy investments in cybersecurity, many institutions still face relentless evolving threats that test their operational readiness and resilience. From increasingly sophisticated attacks to complex compliance demands and vulnerable third-party ecosystems, today’s security leaders must navigate a landscape where one misstep can trigger massive consequences.  

With that in mind, let’s examine the three core threats keeping CISOs up at night — and why tackling them head-on is key to protecting the business and preserving customer trust. 

Threat #1: An Ever-Evolving Threat Surface 

The threat surface for financial services firms is evolving fast and growing more complex by the day. Sophisticated social engineering tactics like multi-factor authentication (MFA) fatigue and SaaS communication platform takeovers are now common entry points for attackers; these tactics exploit human behavior instead of technical flaws, making them harder to stop and detect.  

When attacks are successful, the impacts are widespread. One financial services firm, for example, had nearly 440,000 messages containing sensitive data exported from its Slack instance. When cyber incidents occur, recovery costs are massive; while the average breach costs $4.88 million to resolve, the average price tag for financial services firms is $6.08 million — 22% higher — according to IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report. 

At the same time, hybrid work models and widespread third-party access have amplified insider threats, whether intentional or accidental. Even well-meaning employees can become conduits for cyberattacks when using unsecured devices or external collaboration tools.  

Additionally, regulators are increasingly scrutinizing how firms manage and monitor their communication channels post-incident, adding pressure to ensure secure, auditable systems are in place. 

Add it all up, and protecting collaboration tools isn’t just an IT concern; it’s critical for safeguarding the entire organization.  

Threat #2: Insecure Collaboration & Shadow IT 

Insecure collaboration tools and other shadow IT applications pose a growing threat to operational confidence in financial services. In fact, 78% of financial services IT decision-makers have serious concerns about how their teams utilize unsanctioned collaboration services. 

During incidents and audits, teams often turn to unvetted communication platforms — messaging apps, personal email, and unauthorized file-sharing tools — to move quickly and bypass clunky systems. These tools, not built for regulated environments, create audit blind spots and expose sensitive data to unnecessary risk. Not only can hackers exploit these services and steal mission-critical data, regulators can also levy significant fines. In 2022, for example, the Securites and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced more than $1.1 billion in penalties against 15 Wall Street firms for failing to preserve electronic communications. 

When employees perceive official channels as too slow or difficult, they’ll often “work around” established controls, unintentionally undermining security protocols. This introduces shadow IT — i.e., technology used without organizational approval — which complicates compliance and incident response. 

As regulatory scrutiny of communication channels grows, financial firms need to prioritize secure and compliant collaboration solutions that are not only robust but also intuitive enough to prevent risky workarounds before they start. 

Threat #3: Ensuring Compliance 

Ensuring compliance in financial services now requires more than just secure systems. It demands proof of secure collaboration.  

Regulations like SOX, NYDFS, and the SEC’s cybersecurity rules — along with the EU Market Abuse Regulation and Digital Operational Resilience Act over in Europe — mandate detailed logs, strict access controls, and robust retention policies. 

The 2024 Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report found that internal actors were responsible for 35% of all data breaches in the financial sector. This finding emphasizes the need for stringent internal communication controls to thwart insider threats. 

To meet evolving regulatory expectations, financial institutions must implement secure, auditable communication platforms that align with compliance requirements and mitigate the risk of both external and internal breaches. 

The Missed Layer: Why Comms Are the Soft Underbelly of Security Strategy 

Security isn’t just about firewalls, detection, and response playbooks. It also includes how teams communicate under pressure. 

Breaches — like the 2015–2016 SWIFT banking hack — show that even with top-tier tools, a lack of secure coordination can cause everything to unravel. When collaboration channels are overlooked or insecure, attackers exploit the confusion, and response efforts stall.   

That’s why communication must be part of your firm’s core cybersecurity fabric — and never an afterthought. No amount of security infrastructure, process documentation, or even tabletop exercises will mitigate a major breach if your team can’t communicate securely and effectively when a real incident happens.   

Bottom line? Secure, resilient collaboration isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s the missing layer separating a fast recovery from a costly crisis. 

What Leading CISOs Are Doing Differently 

To protect against risks, forward-thinking CISOs are reimagining communication as a Tier 1 risk system — not just a convenient tool for chat. They know that when incidents hit, fragmented collaboration slows everything down. 

That’s why more and more are replacing email chains and unsecured chat apps with centralized, auditable collaboration platforms purpose-built for high-stakes environments and designed with security and compliance from the ground up. 

These leaders are embedding policy enforcement — like access controls, retention rules, and logging — directly into the communications layer. More importantly, they’re enabling a resilient response posture — one that works even when primary systems are down, with offline access, role-based tiering, and integration with security and incident response tooling for fast handoffs. 

In a world where seconds count and scrutiny is high, leading CISOs understand that secure collaboration is essential mission-critical infrastructure — not an afterthought. 

How Mattermost Fits into the Big Picture 

Mattermost delivers secure, self-hosted or private cloud collaboration built for organizations where failure is not an option. Unlike consumer-grade tools, Mattermost gives financial services firms complete control over data, access, and deployment.  

That means there’s no third-party exposures, no vendor lock-in, and — most importantly — no compliance blind spots.  

Mattermost integrates deeply with your existing security and compliance workflows — from SIEM and SOAR to identity and audit logging — enabling teams to move fast without breaking policy. That’s why it’s trusted by some of the most demanding organizations in the world, including in the public sector, defense, and financial services industries. 

To learn more about why today’s top-performing financial institutions trust Mattermost for secure collaboration and rapid incident response, check this out.