Financial service firms across the UK reported nearly 1000 cyber incidents to the region's Financial Conduct Authority in 2018, a significant jump from the year prior.

According to a Freedom of Information (FOI) request made by RSM, an international accountancy firm based in London, 819 cyber incidents were reported by financial services firms there last year. That’s a marked increase from 2017 when only 69 incidents were reported to the regulator.

While it operates independent of the UK Government, the Financial Conduct Authority oversees the conduct of 58,000 financial services firms and is the prudential regulator for over 18,000 of them; the service sustains by charging fees to members of the financial services industry.

Retail banks were the biggest victims of incidents according to RSM, with 486, more than half of the total, incidents. Wholesale financial markets, retail investments, retail lending, general insurance and protection, pensions and retirement income, and investment management outfits were responsible for the remaining incidents.

Not every incident was classified as a cyber-attack by the regulator; some were blamed on third party failure, hardware and software issues, human error, and process/control failure.

Of the incidents branded as a cyber-attack, perhaps unsurprisingly many were linked to phishing or credential compromises. Other attacks were triggered either by ransomware, what the regulator categorizes as malicious code, and distributed denial of service attacks.

The root causes of cyber incidents reported to the FCA