When a mid-size community bank realized it couldn’t account for where its most sensitive customer information lived across its networks, the cost wasn’t just financial. The regulatory risk, the potential for compliance violations, and the threat to customer trust created a crisis waiting to happen.
This is the story of how one bank in Millbrook, NY took decisive action to identify and remediate its financial data security vulnerabilities before a breach could occur.
The financial sector has become one of the most targeted industries for cybercriminals launching financial data breaches. In 2024 and 2025, financial institutions faced unprecedented challenges: banks and credit unions experienced over 737 reported compromises, making financial services the top-attacked industry for the first time since 2018. The costs of a financial data breach reflect this reality. The average cost of a data breach in financial institutions now stands at $6.08 million per incident, driven by ransomware crews, supply chain attacks, and AI-powered phishing campaigns.
For community banks, the situation is even more precarious. These institutions manage extensive customer data, including names, social security numbers, bank account details, and financial records. Yet many operate with legacy systems and limited cybersecurity resources. Regulatory requirements like those set by the FDIC add another layer of complexity, requiring banks to maintain and comply with formal Privacy Policy Programs as part of their operating procedures and bank data security framework.
The community bank faced a fundamental problem: they didn’t know where all their data was.
The organization lacked a clear understanding of how much data was at risk, what types of sensitive information existed in their systems, or where that data resided across their networks and communication channels. They knew they were exposed to the risk of regulatory non-compliance and could not provide the forensic evidence needed to support an audit or investigate a breach if one occurred.
The combination of hybrid work environments, cloud applications, and traditional on-premise systems meant data was scattered across multiple locations and storage types. Without visibility into this data landscape, the bank couldn’t effectively protect it. They also lacked the capability to provide forensic evidence to support their security posture during planned or flash audits from regulators.
Working in partnership with Actifile, the bank developed and implemented a comprehensive Privacy Policy Program designed to align with FDIC regulatory requirements and financial data protection standards. Actifile’s Data Security Platform was deployed as the bank’s data governance technology of choice, allowing the organization to establish baseline visibility across all their systems.
Under the guidance of Actifile data specialists, the bank developed operating policies and procedures that would enable a proactive approach to data risks. The operational functionality of Actifile was achieved within 10 business days, including deployment, policy definition, and employee training. This rapid implementation was critical for the bank to move quickly from a state of vulnerability to one of informed protection.
Following initial deployment, the bank conducted a comprehensive data risk assessment to identify where customer and financial data resided. During this discovery phase, the solution quantified data risks in monetary value and captured audit-ready evidence of the bank’s security and compliance posture.
The impact was significant. Actifile’s financial data protection solution helped the bank across several key areas:
Actifile discovered $17.7 million of potential data risk the bank had across different types of sensitive data, both at rest and in motion. This wasn’t just a number; it represented every customer record, every account detail, and every piece of personally identifiable information that could be exploited or lost.
The bank then moved to remediation. Using Actifile’s automatic encryption capability, the bank implemented a security policy that reduced data risk by over 91% within days. More than 100,000 files were encrypted, securing sensitive information across the organization’s infrastructure. Ongoing maintenance of this encryption framework remained very low, with minimal disruption to how the bank operated.
The remaining 9% of residual risk is acceptable under the bank’s enterprise risk management policy and will be further lowered through ongoing data identification and policy adjustments.
The bank’s experience highlights a critical truth: visibility into your data is the first step toward protecting it and achieving financial data security compliance. Without knowing what you have, where it is, or how it’s being used, you cannot comply with FDIC regulatory requirements, respond to audits confidently, or protect against the growing sophistication of cyber attacks targeting financial institutions.
The selection of Actifile’s Data Security Platform as the bank’s data risk management solution provided an excellent resolution to both regulatory and data protection challenges. Actifile’s solution is an effective tool for managing and mitigating risk while improving security posture. It creates a capability of data trust for customers and stakeholders, and helps safeguard the organization’s reputation and competitive advantage.
This is how organizations move from reactive response to proactive protection. The bank went from not knowing their data risks to quantifying them, securing them, and maintaining ongoing compliance with regulatory standards.
Your organization likely faces similar challenges to those experienced by banks and financial institutions. You may have data scattered across multiple cloud platforms, on-premise servers, and hybrid environments. You may not have a clear picture of where sensitive customer or financial information resides. You may be uncertain about your FDIC compliance status.
If this sounds familiar, a comprehensive cyber risk assessment is the logical starting point. BlueTie can help you evaluate your current data security posture, identify vulnerabilities, and develop a roadmap for protecting your most sensitive information.
Ready to understand your data risk exposure? Schedule your cyber risk assessment today. Let us help you move from uncertainty to confidence in your data security.
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