Cyberattack tools built for banks are now targeting professional services firms. What the Check Point financial services research means for your business.
The research from Check Point this week confirming that cyber incidents in financial services doubled in 2025 didn't surprise me. What should surprise you is how those attack patterns immediately spill over into your accounting firm, architecture practice, or boutique consulting shop. There's a brutal logic to modern cybercrime that extends far beyond the obvious targets. If I were running a criminal operation today, I'd target financial institutions too. Their security posture is among the most mature in any industry. The draw for criminals is that these networks are highly interconnected and any downtime costs millions per hour. That translates directly to faster payouts. When a bank can't process transactions, the business hemorrhage creates pressure to pay ransoms quickly. The same tools used to attack JPMorgan last Tuesday get used against your 50-person law firm by Wednesday. That part rarely makes the news. Attackers Don't Discriminate, Their Tools Do The report notes a 105% increase in DDoS attacks against financial institutions. DDoS remains popular because it's cheap to execute and creates immediate pain. Criminals don't need sophisticated code when overwhelming a network with traffic gets the job done. But tools scale. The same botnets used against large banks cost less than $50/hour to rent on dark web marketplaces. Your firm's website or cloud applications are now facing industrialized attack capabilities that were previously reserved for multinationals. Organized groups like Breach Laboratory (responsible for 43 incidents in 2025) develop playbooks against large institutions, then repackage them for mid-market victims. It's why we're seeing identical attack patterns in professional services firms: Cloud misconfigurations exploited within Azure or Google Workspace environments Unmonitored API endpoints allowing silent data exfiltration Weak identity governance letting attackers move laterally once inside The Economic Blind Spot Financial institutions understand security as existential. They staff large teams, buy premium