Recent data shows that while financial firms recognize that cyber threats are increasing in both volume and sophistication, many still lack the operational maturity and speed required to prevent and respond to them. In today’s landscape, delayed detection is no longer just a technical weakness. It’s a threat to client confidence, business standing and regulatory compliance.

The Threat Environment Is Accelerating. Are Investment Firms?

It’s no surprise that the financial industry is one of the most targeted by cyber criminals. Where there’s money, there’s opportunity. Registered investment advisers, hedge funds, and wealth managers hold highly sensitive client financial and personal data, making them prime targets for ransomware and social engineering attacks.

To their credit, firms seem to understand the real nature of the threat. According to Omega’s 2025 Financial Services Cyber Resilience report, nearly 56 percent of financial IT decision makers cite the increasing sophistication of social engineering and ransomware threats as a leading challenge.

But acknowledgment without action is far from a sound security strategy. Despite rising threats, more than half of our survey respondents admitted they would struggle to respond to a ransomware attack using their existing IT and security controls. That gap between awareness and readiness is where risk lives.

Speed Starts with Visibility

Contributing to the industry’s poor breach detection practices is a risky reliance on legacy infrastructure as well as slow adoption of continuous monitoring technology. Our data shows that 50 percent of firms believe their legacy infrastructure or cloud systems would prevent them from quickly containing a breach. At the same time, only 42 percent are utilizing continuous monitoring to assess vulnerabilities across their environment.

That combination creates a reactive security posture. Attackers operate in real time, moving laterally within hours. If detection is not continuous, response is delayed by design.

Extended “dwell time” allows cyber criminals to escalate privileges, exfiltrate sensitive data, and expand their impact before a firm even realizes an incident has occurred. Weeks to contain a breach is not simply inefficient. It dramatically increases financial, legal, and reputational exposure.

Containment Speed Is Becoming a Regulatory Issue

Beyond operational risk, speed now carries regulatory consequences.

Increasing oversight on the part of the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) in the form of recent updates to Regulation S-P will soon ensure that RIAs of all sizes need to take steps to ensure proper containment and disclosure of data breaches.

Back in May 2024, the SEC adopted amendments to S-P that require registered entities to:

• Document formal incident response programs;
• Notify customers within 30 days of qualifying cybersecurity incidents;
• Document third-party oversight and due diligence procedures; and
• Implement enhanced recordkeeping.

Larger RIAs with more than $1.5B in assets under management are now subject to these new rules as of the official deadline in December 2025. Smaller RIAs have until June 3, 2026 to comply.

This means speed is now a compliance requirement – both to detect and contain a breach as well as to notify affected clients and investors who may have been impacted.

A firm cannot meet customer notification obligations without timely detection. It cannot demonstrate “reasonable safeguards” if it lacks the ability to quickly contain compromised systems.

The Business Case for Speed in Financial Services

In encouraging news, half of financial firms we surveyed indicated they plan to prioritize advanced threat detection and response in 2026. This shift reflects a growing understanding that speed directly affects enterprise value.

In financial services, faster detection and containment helps reduce:

• Ransom demands
• Recovery costs
• Downtime for advisors
• Client attrition risk
• Legal and compliance exposure

The average time to detect and average time to contain are no longer purely technical metrics. They are indicators of governance maturity and business resilience.

Is Your Firm Built for Speed?

As regulatory scrutiny increases and threat actors accelerate, financial leaders should be asking:

• Do we have true 24×7 monitoring or business-hours alerting?
• How quickly can we isolate a compromised endpoint?
• When was our incident response plan last tested?
• Can we confidently meet new breach disclosure requirements?
• Are we prepared for Regulation S-P requirements in 2026?

Cyberattacks are inevitable. Extended exposure is not.

In financial services, the firms that win will not be the ones that avoid every incident. They will be the ones that detect faster, contain sooner, communicate transparently, and recover confidently.

Speed is no longer a competitive advantage. It is the baseline for doing business in a regulated industry.

See how financial firms are benchmarking detection speed, response maturity, and Regulation S-P readiness in our latest industry research.

Read Omega Systems’ 2025 Financial Services Cyber Resilience Report – The Survival Imperative