APAC banks face 2.5 million shortage of skilled cyberstaff

Banks may not have the right people in-house to mitigate them.

Asia Pacific’s financial institutions are facing a double whammy of rising cyber threats and a 2.5 million-wide skill gap to combat these threats.

Banks in APAC are having trouble filling in approximately 2.5 million skilled cyber staff needed to deal with cyber threats, particularly third party breaches, reports S&P Global Ratings, referring to data from the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Smaller banking institutions in particular mostly rely on third-party service providers and have fewer cyber-skilled staff to keep a lid on costs, noted S&P Global Credit Ratinsg analyst Nico DeLange.

Improper risk mitigation could increase the likelihood of a successful incursion and lead us to weaken our view of how cyber risks are managed, DeLange warned. 

A lot of the new threats stem from the required services for banks to remain competitive. Increased digitalization, use of cloud-based service providers, and open banking are among the factors heightening third-party risk, according to S&P.