How Cyera Helps Financial Institutions Secure Sensitive Data & Achieve Compliance

Almost everyone reading this article has interacted with a financial institution in some way. Your checking or savings account. Your portfolio of stocks and bonds. The Venmo payment owed to you for winning your ESPN Fantasy Football league (sidenote that was NOT me this year. I’m the one who drafted Christian McCaffrey with the #1 pick). Each of the financial institutions you worked with have access to your sensitive data. Passwords, account numbers, addresses, SSNs, past, present and future financial transactions, and that’s just scratching the surface.

It’s clear that financial institutions operate in a high-stakes environment where protecting sensitive data is paramount. With cyberattacks on the rise and regulatory requirements intensifying, banks, fintech companies, and insurers must safeguard customer information and comply with standards like PCI-DSS, GDPR, HIPAA, and SOX. The institutions who do this well can turn these requirements into a legitimate competitive advantage in the market.

This is where Cyera, and our AI-Native Data Security Platform, helps. We protect sensitive data for Fortune 500 Financial institutions like Citizens Banks.

Let’s explore some of the challenges that Financial Institutions face (side-note if you are already a Security guru, skip to the next section to explore how Cyera might be able to help you.

Data sprawl: While data sprawl in general is not specific to only banks, fintech companies and insurers, it’s extremely common for financial data to be dispersed across multiple environments. This includes legacy systems, cloud storage, and third-party platforms. What is unique to financial institutions here is that they are subject to data retention rules such as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA) in the US, which requires financial institutions to protect consumer financial data, and retain records for at least five years. Five years is a long time in the technology world, so it’s no surprise that data can easily sprawl across IT environments as companies shift to cloud, or even repatriate data back into datacenters for more cost effective processing for AI

Regulatory compliance: Continuous data security scanning, and ongoing monitoring is for their more critical data (the data that will get them in trouble if now identified and protected adequately) required to meet stringent regulations and avoid costly fines.

Crazy-fast changing threat landscape: Cyberattacks are increasingly sophisticated, targeting weak links in data access and storage, as well as using social engineering tactics to manipulate end users, as well as target employees, and third-parties that may have overprivileged access to sensitive data

Not a ton of automation: While automation has improved dramatically in areas such as endpoint security, network security and identity security, the same cannot be said for most data security strategies today. Traditional data security security measures rely heavily on manual data discovery and classification, which are both time-consuming and of course error-prone.

This is how Cyera can help take some of the stress off Security and Data teams within Financial Institutions

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Automated data discovery & classification

Cyera’s agentless platform deploys within 5 minutes, and begins to swiftly scan all data repositories, regardless of location, to uncover where sensitive information resides. We have recently expanded our on-premises coverage as well. Our AI-Native classification provides deep semantic analysis to automatically classify data based on its content and context, and reducing the risk of oversight. So what? This means financial institutions can be confident that every piece of their most sensitive data is accounted for—from customer personal information to transaction records.

Real-time risk detection

Rather than relying on periodic audits, Cyera continuously monitors data environments for misconfigurations, over-permissive access, and potential compliance violations. We use a combination of data policies, and near real time event analysis to provide advanced insight into issues within the customer’s environment. Its dynamic system prioritizes issues based on their potential impact. The system factors in key variables like the sensitivity of data based on their DSPM findings, and identity access insights (Third-party able to view sensitive customer data? IT new GenAI tool starts to use customer data within its prompt outputs?) provided by its Identity Module to determine the size of potential impact, and notifies the customer’s SecOps team based on this metadata. This ensures that data security teams can focus on the most critical threats first. This real-time vigilance is essential for banks and financial services that must act swiftly to mitigate risks.

Automated risk remediation & incident response

Cyera goes beyond detection by automating remediation workflows. When a risk is identified—such as unauthorized access to sensitive data—the platform either automatically implements corrective measures or alerts the security team through integrations with tools like ServiceNow, Jira and Slack. This rapid response minimizes exposure and helps maintain a robust security posture. 

It’s worth noting that we believe that being proactive is the best defense. Last year we introduced a Breach Readiness program as well.This includes table top exercises, as well as provides critical data insights that are helpful in determining the materiality of a data breach - and simplifying compliance with SEC regulations that mandate that material data events must be reported within four business days of the event being discovered.

Continuous compliance monitoring

For financial institutions, compliance isn’t a one-time checklist—it’s an ongoing process. Cyera is equipped with pre-built compliance templates for frameworks such as PCI-DSS, GDPR, and SOX, ensuring that organizations remain audit-ready at all times. With continuous compliance monitoring, financial institutions receive notifications of “issues” discovered, can determine the impacted data within seconds, and even discover potentially related issues as well. Integrations with SOAR and SIEM solutions allow data security teams to easily generate real-time reports and audits, simplifying the path to regulatory approval as well.

Data loss prevention

Cyera also helps to ensure that sensitive data does not leak out of the financial institution’s environment. Its Adaptive DLP solution integrates with existing DLP services like Netskope, Zscaler, and Microsoft Purview, then works to reduce false positives by 80%. By inheriting classification insights from Cyera’s DSPM, Cyera DLP becomes data-aware. Its AI engine spots false positives, determines the root cause of the alert, provides a summary of what happened, helps to fine-tune DLP policies, and can also suggest changes. The solution then shows the increase in accuracy of updating the policy - side by side with the existing policy in place. Data security teams can focus on the DLP events that actually matter, and know exactly what sensitive data was protected in the process.

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A quick example of how we helped a major bank

Consider a major bank that recently integrated Cyera into its security framework. Prior to Cyera, the bank struggled with manual data classification and delayed risk detection, which increased vulnerability during audits. After implementation, the bank experienced:

• A 70% reduction in manual data classification efforts due to AI-driven automation.
• Improved risk detection with near real-time alerts, enabling the security team to address threats before they escalated.
• Enhanced compliance posture, reducing audit preparation time by 50%, which in turn minimized regulatory risks.

This case study illustrates how Cyera transforms data security operations, turning challenges into measurable improvements.

In the financial services industry, data security isn’t just about protecting information—it’s about building trust within customers, ensuring compliance, and maintaining an edge within a very competitive industry. Cyera’s AI-driven data security platform offers a comprehensive solution that automates data discovery, classifies sensitive information accurately, detects risks in real time, and ensures continuous compliance. 

Financial institutions adopting Cyera, like Citizens Bank, and more more, not only safeguard their most critical data more effectively, but also streamline operations, proactively preparing themselves for an regulatory landscape that will no doubt continue to evolve dramatically - especially as businesses look to find more ways to introduce AI within their business.  

Every day Cyera is helping more and more financial institutions realize the benefit of AI-native data security. 

Does any of this sound relevant to you? If so, please feel free to request a demo today and one of my friends here at Cyera will help you work on a data security strategy to keep your data secure, and your business compliant.

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