Contain ransomware in seconds, keep critical services running and have the record ready when the regulator asks.
Ransomware in financial services is more than an IT incident. Under DORA and the UK’s operational resilience rules, it tests whether payments, lending and customer services keep running, and whether you can show what happened against a reporting clock. Helm contains ransomware at the data layer, so critical services can stay available and builds the incident record your board and regulators expect.
Ransomware works the same way in every sector. In financial services, the stakes are higher. Banks, credit unions and insurers hold money, personal data and the trust of customers who expect 24/7 service. When a service stops, customers and supervisors notice at once.
Attacks get through. In Sophos’s 2025 survey of 369 financial services organisations hit by ransomware, 59% of ransomware attacks ended in data encryption, up from 49% a year earlier.
Many regional and mutual institutions face this with lean teams, core systems on-premises or in hybrid estates, and no 24/7 security operations centre. They need a response that starts on its own, at the speed of the attack, and holds up to scrutiny afterwards.
67%
of financial services victims paid the ransom, the highest rate of any sector surveyed.
The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) has applied to banks, insurers, investment firms and other financial entities across the EU since 17 January 2025. It treats ransomware as a question of operational resilience. Institutions need plans to respond to and contain ICT incidents, backup and restoration procedures they can rely on, and a process to classify and report major incidents. Our DORA overview covers the regulation in more detail.
The reporting clock is tight. An initial notification is due within four hours of classifying an incident as major, and no later than 24 hours after becoming aware of it. An intermediate report follows within 72 hours of that, and a final report within a month.
In the UK, the FCA PS21/3 and PRA PS6/21 operational resilience rules gave firms until 31 March 2025 to show they can keep each important business service within its impact tolerance. In the United States, New York’s cybersecurity regulation for financial services requires covered entities to notify the regulator within 72 hours of determining that a cybersecurity incident has occurred.
Across all three, the question is the same. Can you keep critical services running, and can you show how?
Helm works where ransomware does its damage, on the file servers and shares that hold your data. It detects active encryption in under a second and contains the attack on fixed, readable rules your team sets. AI plays no part in containment.
Containment isolates the compromised accounts and devices behind the attack, so the rest of the institution keeps working. Payments, branches and customer services can carry on while the incident is handled. In a documented incident, containment was complete 8.9 seconds after the first malicious file event. That is a demonstrated result, not a service level.
Helm is built for the estates many institutions actually run, including legacy and on-premises systems. It adds the containment layer to the EDR, SIEM and identity tools you already use, rather than replacing them.
Every detection, containment action and recovery check is logged as it happens, with a timestamp. When the reporting clock starts, your team classifies and reports the incident from a complete record, not from memory.
Helm maps that record to the frameworks you report against, including DORA, NIS2, GDPR and NIST CSF. It supports your reporting rather than replacing it, and your team stays in control of what goes to the authorities.
The same record answers the board, which DORA holds accountable for ICT risk, and the insurer reviewing a claim or a renewal. It also feeds the lessons learnt that DORA and the UK rules both expect after a disruption.
Ransomware will keep testing financial services. Control means the attack is contained in seconds and customers keep being served while your team responds.
Recovery is not done until it is verified clean. Backups make recovery possible, and Helm verifies that systems are clean before they come back, so you restore your services, not the attack. The record shows how every step was handled. That is how a bank, insurer or credit union stays open and shows its regulator how.
To see what this looks like in your own environment, talk to us.
