DSALTA Blog
Global Banking Risk Assessment: World’s Top 100 Bank
Written by
Ogulcan Ozdemir
|
Product Marketing Manager
Published on
Oct 16, 2025
How Secure Are the World’s Top 100 Banks in 2025?
Why We Created This Report
Cyber threats in banking aren’t slowing down; they’re multiplying.
From ransomware to exposed cloud assets, every global institution now lives under constant digital pressure.
At DSALTA, we wanted to answer one question:
How secure are the world’s largest banks, really?
So, we collected and analyzed thousands of signals from public IPs, domains, and network configurations to leaked credentials and SSL enforcement across the top 100 banks in 24 countries.
The result is the Global Banking Risk Assessment Report 2025, a data-driven snapshot of cybersecurity in modern finance.
The Mission Behind the Metrics
100 banks manage over $180 trillion in total assets, yet many still depend on fragmented, outdated security practices.
Our goal wasn’t to expose weaknesses but to benchmark resilience and help institutions see how their cyber posture compares globally.
We designed this report to:
Highlight measurable differences between regions and bank sizes.
Identify the most common risk patterns across digital infrastructure.
Inspire a more proactive, transparent approach to cyber governance.
What You’ll Learn From the 2025 Report
The Risk Assessment Report offers more than raw numbers; it tells a story about trust, scale, and preparedness.
1. The Global Cyber Risk Snapshot
Avg. Risk Assessment Score: 621 / 1000
Range: 454 to 886 (a 432-point spread)
82% of banks sit between 500–750, meaning most remain in a moderate risk zone.
Interpretation:
Global banking cybersecurity is adequate but uneven. While some banks achieve near-perfect technical compliance, most struggle with continuous control monitoring and third-party oversight.
2. The Paradox of Size
Larger banks—those managing over $1 trillion in assets—aren’t automatically safer.
Our data shows:
Large Banks: 603 RAS
Mid-Tier: 646
Small Banks: 654
Smaller institutions, with simpler systems and faster remediation loops, outperform their massive peers.
This trend appears consistently across every region, proving that agility often beats scale.
3. The Biggest Security Gaps
Across all regions, four recurring weaknesses dominate:
HSTS missing – 96 % of banks
High-severity CMS vulnerabilities – 83 %
Cobalt Strike detections – 82 %
Ransomware-susceptible remote access – 49 %
These findings illustrate that even world-class organizations still face issues in basic web hardening and endpoint control.
The Global Leaders: Who’s Winning the Cybersecurity Race?
When the data was scored and normalized, India and South Korea emerged as 2025’s cybersecurity champions.
🥇 HDFC Bank (India) — RAS 886
🥈 Industrial Bank of Korea (South Korea) — 820
🥉 U.S. Bancorp (United States) — 811
Their results show that leadership in cyber resilience is shifting eastward.
While North American banks still dominate in assets, Asian institutions now lead in readiness and recovery speed—a trend that redefines global trust standards.
Regional Insights: Who Leads, Who Lags
The data paints a clear picture. While financial power remains concentrated in the United States and Europe, cyber resilience leadership has shifted toward Asia. Regional averages show a widening performance gap that challenges long-held assumptions about maturity and readiness.
Asia: The Rising Cybersecurity Powerhouse
Asia’s banking sector continues to demonstrate the most consistent cybersecurity performance. The region’s banks scored the highest overall Risk Assessment Scores (RAS), driven by strong government regulations, centralized IT strategies, and rapid digital modernization.
Regional Highlights:
South Korea achieved an average RAS of 735 across multiple institutions, including Industrial Bank of Korea and Woori Financial Group.
India’s HDFC Bank recorded the single highest RAS of 866, outperforming every other bank globally.
China’s major banks, such as China Everbright and Ping An, ranked in the top quartile for DNS and email security despite managing large digital footprints.
Asian institutions excelled in network segmentation, vulnerability remediation, and endpoint protection. These results highlight how regional collaboration, regulatory oversight, and advanced automation programs can achieve measurable results without excessive infrastructure complexity.
North America: Strong Investment, Uneven Outcomes
North American banks invest heavily in cybersecurity but remain hindered by scale and legacy systems. The average RAS across U.S. institutions is 620, reflecting significant variance between top-tier performers and lagging institutions.
Key Observations:
U.S. Bancorp reached an impressive 811 RAS, ranking third globally.
Goldman Sachs scored 768 with exceptional endpoint security and IP reputation management.
Bank of America and Wells Fargo, both exceeding $1 trillion in assets, landed in the mid-600 range, indicating high exposure from extensive infrastructure and subdomain complexity.
The analysis suggests that larger U.S. banks face a complexity burden. Their thousands of domains, legacy applications, and merged infrastructures create hidden risk surfaces that even advanced monitoring cannot fully eliminate.
Europe: Legacy Infrastructure Meets Modern Pressure
European institutions show moderate resilience, averaging RAS between 590 and 610. While major players like Barclays (746) and Crédit Mutuel (738) perform well, others, such as Société Générale and Intesa Sanpaolo, struggle with outdated configurations and inconsistent framework compliance.
Recurring European Challenges:
Decentralized IT management and cross-border regulatory fragmentation
Outdated web infrastructure and slower patch cycles
Lower adoption of DNSSEC and DMARC standards compared to Asian peers
These factors reveal that Europe’s cyber posture remains strong in governance but less dynamic in execution. The need for modernization across infrastructure and threat intelligence pipelines is evident.
Middle East and Emerging Markets: Fast Adopters, Focused Growth
Banks from emerging regions, including the Middle East and South America, show rapid progress in governance maturity.
Institutions like Qatar National Bank (577) and Banco Bradesco (770) demonstrate that regulatory alignment and focused automation can close the resilience gap quickly.
Emerging market banks typically operate simpler digital ecosystems, allowing them to adopt new technologies without legacy constraints. This agility is becoming a competitive advantage in managing cyber risk.
Key Performance Patterns
The 2025 report identifies three global performance trends that all financial leaders should understand:
Smaller Banks, Stronger Results
Institutions under $500 billion in assets outperform larger peers, with an average RAS of 654. Their limited exposure and unified technology stacks reduce risk across web and network layers.Infrastructure Complexity Drives Vulnerability
Banks with high domain and IP counts show a direct correlation to higher vulnerability exposure. For example, Itaú Unibanco operates over 7,000 public IPs and reported several open services that increased the attack surface size.Regulatory Pressure Works
Markets with clear cybersecurity mandates, such as South Korea and Singapore, consistently outperform deregulated environments. Structured compliance frameworks enforce better monitoring and faster remediation cycles.
What This Means for the Global Banking Sector
The findings point to a strategic inflection point. The world’s largest banks have invested in sophisticated defense systems, yet the results prove that investment alone does not guarantee security maturity.
Cyber resilience now depends on operational agility, regulatory alignment, and architectural simplicity, not just technology spending.
Financial leaders should prioritize:
Reducing external attack surface by consolidating public domains and IPs
Implementing continuous monitoring programs for third-party and internal systems
Conducting regular framework-based risk assessments to maintain compliance readiness
Investing in endpoint and network segmentation before expanding automation
Strategic Takeaways for Banking Leadership
The Global Banking Risk Assessment Report 2025 offers a simple but urgent message for financial executives:
Cybersecurity is not about how much an organization spends; it’s about how efficiently it manages complexity.
Institutions that perform best in the RAS model share several core traits:
Centralized governance and real-time asset visibility
Limited exposure through controlled domain and IP management
Automation across compliance, remediation, and incident response
Data-driven culture built on continuous assessment rather than annual audits
Banks that understand and apply these principles develop a clear competitive advantage. They build customer trust faster, reduce operational risk, and meet compliance demands more efficiently.
From Assessment to Action
Every metric in this report connects directly to real-world security posture.
For instance:
96% of banks still lack HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS), exposing them to downgrade attacks.
82% of institutions show Cobalt Strike C2 detections, meaning adversaries actively probe their infrastructure.
49% maintain ransomware-susceptible remote access services, an immediate operational risk.
Such issues are not exclusive to global banks. They appear in every sector where complex infrastructures outgrow their monitoring capabilities.
How Organizations Can Respond
Start with Continuous Risk Assessment
Move beyond point-in-time audits. Real-time monitoring enables early detection and faster remediation.Automate Control Validation
Use automation tools to map existing controls to frameworks like ISO 27001, NIST CSF, or PCI DSS, reducing manual workload.Adopt a Vendor Risk Strategy
As supply chain dependencies grow, third-party exposure is now a leading cause of breaches. DSALTA’s Vendor Risk Management module allows organizations to assess and monitor partners continuously.Integrate Trust Reporting
Transparency builds confidence. DSALTA’s Trust Center helps share verified compliance evidence securely with stakeholders.
Conclusion: The Future of Cyber Resilience
The 2025 Risk Assessment Report confirms that security excellence is not tied to geography, budget, or brand reputation. It depends on the discipline of visibility and the ability to adapt faster than threats evolve.
Banks like HDFC, Industrial Bank of Korea, and U.S. Bancorp show that clarity, focus, and architectural simplicity can outperform even the largest global infrastructures.
For every financial organization, the next step is not just compliance but continuous improvement—and DSALTA exists to make that measurable, automated, and transparent.
Explore the Full Report
Read the complete Global Banking Risk Assessment Report 2025
Learn More About DSALTA
Discover how DSALTA helps banks and enterprises stay compliant, reduce third-party risk, and build trust through continuous automation. Book a free demo
