Cyber risk in financial services is often discussed in broad terms: AI is changing everything, supply chains are exposed, identity is under attack. The numbers behind those claims make the case more sharply. Here are five that will frame the conversation at CyberSecurity Live 2026, taking place at the Hilton London Tower Bridge on Wednesday.

1. 30 per cent

That is the share of financial services leaders who recognise that AI could accelerate the discovery and exploitation of software vulnerabilities, but have no plans to change their approach yet. That is according to a new survey of the sector by FStech and Red Hat. Only around a quarter (26 per cent) say they have already changed how they manage vulnerabilities in response. Not a single respondent said their organisation can remediate a critical vulnerability in an enterprise application within hours, and dependencies between software components were cited as the biggest barrier to fixing flaws quickly (43 per cent).
Julio Guijarro, CTO at Red Hat, will discuss the findings in his presentation, Building trust in Open Source: How Lightwell is changing enterprise security (09.50), and explore why most large institutions still discover the same flaws independently and fix them in isolation.

2. Less than one per cent

AI-powered tools can now identify critical zero-day vulnerabilities in hours rather than months. Yet according to the same session, fewer than one per cent of them have been patched. The speed of discovery has run far ahead of the speed of repair, and attackers have access to the same tools as defenders.

The issue runs through the morning's panel, From code to cloud: Rethinking application security in financial services (10.20), where speakers from HSBC, Allica Bank, OpenText and Alvarez & Marsal will discuss how firms decide which weaknesses create genuine business exposure, and act before they are exploited.

3. $5 billion

That is the scale of Lightwell, IBM and Red Hat's software supply chain initiative. It is designed to deliver fixes that are production-ready and cryptographically signed, and contributed back to the original open source projects rather than kept as private forks. The size of the investment shows how seriously the industry now takes the risk sitting in shared code.

4. More than half

According to OpenAI, agentic tools accounted for more than half of the output generated by its EU enterprise and business customers by the end of September 2026. Many of these agents take on the identity, permissions and access of the person they work for. A single compromised device could therefore hand an attacker every agent, credential and session on it.

Matt Coppinger, EMEA CTO at Omnissa, will explain why the endpoint is becoming the last mile of enterprise AI security (11.50), and how security leaders can find every AI agent running across their estate, including those nobody approved.

5. 99 per cent

Speaking at last year's CyberSecurity Live, Anna Webb, head of global security operations at Kocho, told delegates that identity is a factor in 99 per cent of cyberattacks. "Attackers know that identity is the new perimeter," she said.

That idea sits at the heart of this year's panel, Building tomorrow's defences today: Zero Trust, quantum readiness and the path to cyber resilience (12.20), with Sebastian Coles, CISO at OakNorth Bank; Craig Beattie of Celent; and Scott Doerr, founder and CEO of Foreguard Advisory Group.

Beyond the numbers

Figures only tell part of the story. The day opens with a keynote from Claire MacArthur, Head of Technology, Resilience & Cyber at the Financial Conduct Authority, on what it takes to build, and evidence, resilience in a changing threat landscape. Former HSBC managing director Nadya Hijazi will share lessons from protecting digital banking at global scale, and Ben Peet, UK/Europe CISO at Standard Chartered Bank, closes the programme with his 10 top tips for CISO teams in 2027.

CyberSecurity Live takes place on Wednesday 11 November at the Hilton London Tower Bridge. Registered attendees will also be entered into a draw to win a £100 Virgin Experience gift voucher.

Register now.

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