The need for stronger digital resilience and cybersecurity continues to grow as the threat landscape in Europe evolves rapidly. With the rise of AI adding new layers of complexity, businesses are focusing on enhancing their cybersecurity and modernising their systems to better prepare for future threats. At the same time, CISOs are playing a bigger role in strategic decision-making.
PwC's report "2025 Global Digital Trust Insights" highlights crucial gaps that companies should address to attain cyber resilience.
2025 Global Digital Trust Insights Survey Insights for Financial Services Sector
Here are the key findings and insights for the financial services sector:
Prioritized Risks for Mitigation: cyber risks are the top priority for 59% of respondents. Concern is even higher in banking and capital markets (67%) and in insurance (62%). Digital and technology risks have a significant impact on banking and capital markets (60%).
Preparedness for Threats: organisations feel least prepared to handle cloud-related threats (36%), followed by third-party breaches (33%) and the spread of deepfakes and disinformation (28%).
Cyber Budget Allocation: in 2025, organisations are prioritising their cyber budgets toward data protection and data trust (46%), technology modernisation (45%), and ongoing security training for employees (35%).
Impact of Generative AI and Cloud Technology: Generative AI and cloud technologies have both significantly increased the potential attack surface — affecting 30% of respondents.
Generative AI in Cyber Defence: organisations are prioritising the use of Generative AI for threat detection and response (41%), threat intelligence (39%), and detecting malware and phishing attacks (38%).
Internal Challenges with Generative AI: the main challenges include insufficient control mechanisms and weak risk management (40%), along with difficulties in data governance and the absence of standardised policies (39%).
Confidence in Compliance: only 27% of respondents feel confident about meeting consumer privacy regulations, and just 21% — about complying with AI regulations. Still, 34% are actively working to improve their compliance in cybersecurity and data privacy.
Challenges in Cyber Risk Quantification: key issues include unclear definitions of risk outcomes (45%), poor data quality (43%), legal uncertainties (41%), and the complexity of the tools used to quantify cyber risks (35%).
About the survey
The 2025 Global Digital Trust Insights is a survey of 4,042 business and technology leaders conducted from May to July 2024.
Respondents operate in a range of industries, including industrials and services (21%), tech, media, telecom (20%), financial services (19%), retail and consumer markets (17%), energy, utilities and resources (11%), health (7%), and government and public services (4%).
Respondents are based in 77 countries globally. There were 230 survey participants in Central and Eastern Europe from countries such as the Czech Republic, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, Estonia, Latvia and other countries.
The Global Digital Trust Insights Survey was previously known as the Global State of Information Security Survey (GSISS). Now in its 27th year, it’s the longest-running annual survey on cybersecurity trends. It’s also the largest survey in the cybersecurity industry and the only one that draws participation from senior business executives, not just security and technology executives.
PwC Research, PwC’s global Centre of Excellence for market research and insight, conducted this survey.
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