Responding to a Financial Compromise Cybersecurity Threat

Financial compromise occurs when an organization’s financial information, such as bank accounts, invoices, or payment systems, is accessed or manipulated by an unauthorized party. It can lead to direct monetary loss, data breaches, and long-term reputational damage. The attack vectors and motives of the threat actors vary but the goal is the same: access and steal valuable financial data.

The SimSpace Training Catalog includes several training simulations based on real-world examples of financial compromise attacks. In this blog, we’ll take a look at an example of a typical investigation a security team would conduct to identify and expel an attacker in the system. 

In the example, we look at how the fictional City Slough Credit Union experiences what at first appears to be a simple unsecure VPN configuration, but soon escalates to a database dump of PII, data exfiltration, and a ransomware demand. 

Let’s look at the steps City Slough Credit Union (CSCU) responds to the alert that an attacker has breached their system.

Rapid Identification and Traceback 

When the alarm sounds—in CSCU’s case, by an alert triggered by an unusually large number of records being queried from the database—security teams need to start working backwards up the Cyber Kill Chain. A large data query like this indicates potential compromise because security tools are set to a baseline of usual behavior; most legitimate users or systems query only the data they need for a specific task. When someone pulls everything, for example, entire customer databases or HR records, it could signal that they’re trying to collect information for malicious use. Attackers often start by querying large datasets to identify valuable information before exporting it. This reconnaissance phase helps them know what to steal next, making large data queries an early warning sign of a potential breach.

What does the team do next?

1. Identify the initial incident. Start with the anomaly – in this case the massive data query – and work from there to pinpoint the affected assets
2. Determine the impact. In the case of financial compromise, this means confirming what data was accessed (PII, account numbers) and the potential regulatory exposure 
3. Find the source. Use your SIEM to pivot through logs. In this case, the team must trace the SQL query back to the host IP address and the workstation name
4. Identify the user and the process. In this case they must link the machine back to the user ($joshua.falken$) and identify the malicious process used in the compromise (rubyw64.exe that connects to a Command and Control server)
5. Pinpoint initial access. It’s crucial to find out how the attacker got into your systems in the first place. Here the team traces further back through VPN logs to identify the external IP address used to gain entry via an unsecure general access VPN. 

Once the team has a complete and forensically sound timeline that connects the initial VPN log in to the final data exfiltration, they can begin targeted containment, preventing the attacker from causing further damage or covering their tracks.

Cyber Kill Chain

1. Reconnaissance: The attacker gathers information about the target, such as systems, users, and vulnerabilities.
2. Weaponization: They create a malicious payload, like a phishing email or exploit, tailored to the target.
3. Delivery: The payload is sent to the target through a chosen vector, such as email, a website, or removable media.
4. Exploitation: The attacker uses a vulnerability or trick to execute their malicious code on the target system.
5. Installation: Malware or backdoors are installed to establish persistent access.
6. Command and Control (C2): The attacker connects to the compromised system remotely to issue commands.
7. Actions on Objectives: They carry out their ultimate goals, like stealing data, disrupting operations, or spreading further.

Containment, Eradication, and Validation

Once the source and the malicious processes are identified, the focus shifts to stopping the attack, cleaning the environment, and validating controls.

Let’s look at how CSCU’s team do it:

1. Immediately isolate the compromised hosts and block the malicious Command and Control IP address at the firewall.
2. Revoke the privileges of the compromised user and the shared VPN account.
3. Systematically search all affected hosts for persistence mechanisms and remove them. In this case the attacker used a Windows Registry Run Key and a malicious service to ensure re-entry.
4. Hunt for other compromised machines and locate all of them. In the example, the attacker had set up a second seemingly unused RAT on cscu-corp0, a common tactic to maintain access if the primary host is cleaned.
5. Remediate the root cause. A single shared VPN is a massive security gap. The security team at CSCU now needs to urgently overhaul the entire VPN system and authentication policy.

Ideally, you should now be able to get complete verifiable assurance that the adversary has been evicted, their persistence mechanisms are gone, and the initial vulnerability has been permanently closed. 

How a Cyber Range Prepares You For a Real Attack

In a high-stakes environment where every second of downtime or every piece of exfiltrated PII carries significant financial and reputational risk, you can’t afford to rely on static training, untested tools, and unvalidated processes.

A cyber range allows you to test, train, and validate your team’s readiness against attacks modeled on real threats.

Train to Build Muscle Memory on Realistic Scenarios

The CSCU investigation example required a rapid coordinated effort combining Networking, Windows domain, SQL, and SIEM (Splunk) skills. SimSpace’s cyber range helps your SOC analysts practice the exact forensic pivot – from an anomalous SQL query to a C2 beacon – in a safe, high-fidelity environment that mirrors your own technology stack and network topology. This is how you sharpen skills and build muscle memory, leading to an improved SOC response and reduced dwell time.

Test Your Tools

Don’t just assume tools work and instead validate and tune your entire tech stack from EDR to SOAR. By running an attack like the one against CSCU in the SimSpace environment, you can measure detection, latency, and false positives in context. This data-driven approach allows you to optimize your security technology against financial-specific threats and is critical to rationalizing your tech spend and proving your security ROI.

Validate That Your Playbooks Work Under Pressure

For a highly regulated industry like financial services facing intense regulatory oversight, a SimSpace cyber range allows you to stress-test your processes, like incident response and disaster recovery. You can validate your controls, playbooks, and compliance against realistic financial-specific threat scenarios and generate audit-ready reporting, proving demonstrable resilience to executives and regulators.

Test Your Team to Respond to Financial Compromise

SimSpace’s expertly designed courses span foundational to advanced levels across Blue, Red, and Purple Team disciplines. This cybersecurity training platform delivers a breadth of evolving cybersecurity exercises that enhance incident response, threat detection, and offensive security capabilities—driving measurable progress in cyber resilience training for enterprises. Get the Training Catalog.