Ever since people started putting their money into banks and financial institutions, other people have sought to steal those deposits or otherwise fraudulently obtain those protected assets. When someone asked infamous 1920s-era bank robber Willie Sutton why he robbed banks, he simply replied, “Because that’s where the money is.”
Today, much of the money held by banks and other financial institutions is in digital form, and many of the sensitive records held by those firms can be just as valuable as the digital currency itself. But the reasons behind the targeting of financial institutions by threat actors remain much the same as they were in Sutton’s time over 100 years ago: that’s where the money — and at least some valuable personal data — is kept.
