Financial services stand at a digital crossroads. Rapid cloud adoption, hybrid workforces and shifting customer expectations are driving innovation, whilst also expanding areas of risk and threat.
Recent cyber attacks targeting retail giants such as M&S and Cartier have awakened business leaders sector-wide (if they weren’t already) to a fundamental truth. Cyber security in today’s age is a board-level imperative, tightly interwoven with regulatory compliance, customer trust and business continuity.
Financial institutions can safely navigate this digital crossroads by embedding cyber security into every stage of their digital journey. This begins with secure hybrid cloud migration and encompasses backup and disaster recovery planning, as well as readiness for regulations such as the Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA), an EU regulation which came into force in January 2025.
Resilience over security
Going beyond cyber security (threat prevention, in basic terms), cyber resilience should be the ultimate goal for financial services firms. Security can help you prevent attacks. But ‘when’ (not ‘if’) systems are breached, resilience determines your ability to survive and recover.
This is the art of maintaining operational integrity in the face of inevitable disruptions. From malware outbreaks and distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, to human error and third-party failures, resilience means being able to withstand, respond to and recover from incidents without compromising service delivery or customer data.
For us at Wavenet, a strong cyber resilience strategy includes four key factors:
- Immutable backups and air-gapped data to restore operations cleanly after an attack
- Clear incident response protocols which define roles and ensure timely action
- Disaster recovery and business continuity plans tailored to critical systems and their dependencies
- Regular testing and rehearsals to confirm that plans actually work under pressure
This is where DORA offers a comprehensive framework upon which to base a solid cyber resilience strategy. It brings operational resilience into regulatory scope for financial firms and their ICT providers. It mandates robust capabilities across five pillars: ICT risk management; incident reporting; resilience testing; third-party oversight; and information sharing.
While many firms already align with established standards like ISO 27001, DORA raises the bar. It requires a holistic view of cyber risk, including third-party vendors and cloud services. It demands evidence of regular testing and rapid incident response. And it highlights the need for secure, recoverable data systems across complex, hybrid environments.
For Wavenet customers, this is not new territory. We’ve helped major UK financial institutions develop resilience roadmaps, modernise backup systems and implement secure hybrid cloud solutions that meet both performance and compliance goals. From immutable backups and cyber incident response to managed detection and response (MDR) services, our goal is to provide end-to-end cyber resilience across people, processes and platforms.
Secure digital transformation
As financial organisations modernise their infrastructure – whether migrating contact centres to the cloud, adopting AI for customer service or deploying unified communications – cyber security must evolve alongside. Legacy systems can’t keep up with the pace of change, nor can they offer the level of visibility and control that regulators now expect.
We focus on five key areas here:
- Hybrid cloud architectures with secure data flows and consistent policy enforcement
- Integrated security across networks, endpoints and applications (as opposed to isolated tools)
- Real-time visibility and automated threat response through specialist tools like EDR, NDR and SIEM
- Expert teams monitoring and managing the cyber security solutions providing around the clock detection and immediate threat response
- A comprehensive threat-led penetration testing, red teaming and cyber incident exercising framework
Giving attention to these five areas allows digital transformation to serve as a sure pathway to stronger security, smarter operations and better customer experiences – all critical elements in the high-stakes sector of financial services.
Yes, cyber threats are evolving. But so are the tools to manage them. With the right strategy, financial firms can move faster, serve customers better and still meet the highest standards of security and resilience.
Wavenet helps organisations in the financial sector strike the right path from that digital crossroads, not only enabling them to meet regulatory expectations and maintain customer confidence, but also, critically, ensuring that cyber resilience is built in holistically… and never bolted on as an afterthought.
Steve Burden, Director of Connectivity & Cyber Security, Wavenet
Learn more about CyberGuard, Wavenet’s cyber security services, at Wavenet.co.uk.
