APAC Financial Institutions Face Intensifying Cyber Attacks as Campaigns More Than Double in 2025: Check Point Research

Financial institutions across Asia Pacific are facing escalating and increasingly coordinated cyber threats, as global cyberattack campaigns against the sector more than doubled year-on-year, according to new findings from Check Point Exposure Management Research.

The global report shows that cyberattacks targeting financial institutions surged from 864 incidents in 2024 to 1,858 in 2025, with APAC emerging as one of the most strategically targeted regions. Sustained attack activity was recorded across India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and the broader Southeast Asian market, spanning data breaches, DDoS attacks, ransomware, website defacement, mobile banking trojans and emerging AI-powered fraud campaigns.

Key APAC Findings

• Data breaches and leaks: India ranked second globally with 31 incidents, followed by Indonesia with 24.
• Ransomware: South Korea emerged as the second most targeted country worldwide with 31 incidents. Japan recorded 9 attacks, while India and Malaysia reported 10 each.
• DDoS attacks: India experienced 31 incidents, with attackers increasingly targeting digital banking portals and government-linked financial ecosystems.
• Website defacement: India recorded 36 attacks, ranking second globally after the United States. Indonesia (8) and Japan (3) also saw sustained activity.

APAC Becomes the Epicentre of High-Velocity Cybercrime

The report highlights that APAC’s large digital populations and rapidly expanding mobile-first fintech ecosystems—particularly in markets such as India, Indonesia and Southeast Asia—have made the region disproportionately vulnerable to credential theft, mobile malware and AI-driven scam operations.

Mobile banking Trojans, including Herodotus, actively targeted users across Japan, South Korea, India and Indonesia, while AI-powered investment scams and phishing-as-a-service campaigns, such as Spiderman, scaled rapidly across multilingual APAC communities.

The convergence of hacktivism (DDoS and defacement), financially motivated ransomware, and industrialised phishing infrastructure indicates that financial institutions in the region are being attacked simultaneously across multiple vectors.

Call for Intelligence-Led Defence

As APAC increasingly becomes a testing ground for high-volume, high-velocity cyber campaigns, the report urges financial institutions to strengthen identity governance, mobile banking security, and fraud detection capabilities. It also highlights the importance of exposure management platforms that unify threat intelligence, attack-surface visibility, exploitability context and safe automated remediation.

“APAC’s rapid digital growth has made it one of the most actively targeted regions globally,” said Shir Atzil, Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst at Check Point Exposure Management Research. “India, Indonesia, South Korea and Southeast Asia sit at the crossroads of hacktivism, financial crime and emerging AI-driven fraud. Financial institutions must adopt intelligence-led defences that address mobile threats, identity abuse and cross-border attack campaigns before they scale further.”