The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council recently announced the retirement or sunsetting of their Cybersecurity Assessment Tool (CAT). This tool allowed finance sector businesses to self-evaluate the strength of their network against cyber threats.
This change comes as other guidelines emerge, providing more updated and sophisticated standards for financial businesses to evaluate their cybersecurity.
The FFIEC CAT Sunset statement said the tool is being retired as a resource as of August 31, 2025, following the release of more robust guidelines from other entities such as:
The CAT was a tool to help financial businesses gauge their preparedness for cyber attacks through a series of guidelines and standards.
As cyber-attacks worsen across industries that deal with sensitive information such as law, healthcare, and finance, regulators have cracked down on minimum cybersecurity requirements.
This illustrates the need for businesses in the financial services industry to get a handle on their cybersecurity strategy through comprehensive assessments that evaluate:
There are many steps financial services businesses can take to become compliant and mitigate the risk of cyber attacks. Some of the industry-specific regulations financial businesses must follow include:
These regulations often set standards for minimum security measures such as multi-factor authentication, disaster recovery plans, encryption, network monitoring, and regular network assessments from third parties.
To learn more about what network assessments entail, check out our blog: What Is a Network Assessment? (How It Works & Why It's Important)
There are several ways to evaluate your network's defenses against hackers.
A few different methods to audit your network security include getting a network assessment, a penetration test, or combined services that include both. Many IT services for financial service businesses include these in their offerings, so make sure to ask when looking into providers.
Penetration testing can involve many different services. However, the general purpose is to simulate an attack on your network by threat actors to see how your system responds.
This may involve a simple scan with a cybersecurity tool, or a more in-depth process and analysis by cybersecurity experts. This is an important distinction to look out for, because not all penetration testing services offer the same value for your money.
When looking into penetration testing services, seek out providers that offer:
To learn more about penetration testing and how they compare to vulnerability assessments read our blog: Penetration Testing vs. Vulnerability Assessment―Which is Best For You?
Unlike penetration testing, network assessments do more than evaluate the strength of your network security. These audits dive into your device fleet, licensing, software updates or missing patches, vulnerabilities like open ports, current IT costs, and a number of other IT details.
These assessments might be required on a regular basis in order for your business to remain compliant with different regulations. Read more about these services in our blog: Network Assessments: What Insights Do They Reveal?
Along with investing in penetration testing and network assessments from reputable MSPs, many financial businesses are now moving towards Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC) services.
Governance, Risk, and Compliance as a Service (GRCaaS) is an emerging offering from many outsourced IT companies. This combines the value of outsourced cybersecurity managment with practical compliance management all in one platform.
To read more about GRC, check out our blog by industry expert and comliance paralegal Theresa Pickens: Ask the Expert: What is Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance (GRC)?
As cyber attacks become more common, cybersecurity services become more specialized for different industries. IT services for the financial industry have become imperative in data security and preventing years of hardship that can stem from breaches.
If you're interested in penetration testing, network assessments, or general IT solutions for financial services companies, click the button below to speak to an expert.