Artificial intelligence is becoming embedded throughout financial services, helping automate operations, improve efficiency and strengthen cybersecurity.

But new research from Gigamon suggests that AI’s rapid adoption is simultaneously exposing banks and financial institutions to a new generation of cyber risks that many organisations are still learning to manage.

The company’s latest industry survey found financial services organisations are leading other sectors in deploying AI-driven security automation. Two-thirds now allow AI systems to initiate security actions independently, significantly ahead of organisations overall.

That level of automation reflects the demands placed on financial institutions, where threats emerge quickly and regulatory expectations continue rising.

However, AI adoption is not eliminating cyber risk.

Instead, organisations are finding themselves navigating a rapidly evolving threat landscape.

The survey found 77 per cent experienced an AI-related breach during the past year, while almost every organisation affected reported tangible business impacts including financial loss, regulatory consequences, data exposure or increased cyber insurance costs.

For boards and executive leadership teams, those findings reinforce that cybersecurity has become a business resilience issue rather than purely a technology challenge.

The report also highlights growing concern around future risks.

Nearly nine in ten respondents expressed concern about quantum-enabled “harvest now, decrypt later” attacks, while more than one-third identified encrypted traffic as their greatest vulnerability today.

As financial institutions continue modernising infrastructure through hybrid cloud strategies, maintaining visibility across increasingly distributed environments is becoming more difficult.

Despite widespread investment in cybersecurity technologies, more than half of respondents said fragmented tools remain their biggest operational challenge.

Consequently, organisations are shifting attention toward achieving complete visibility into data moving across cloud environments, applications and networks.

Ninety-five per cent believe comprehensive visibility into data in motion is now essential to effective security, while 94 per cent say deep observability forms the foundation of securing AI deployments.

The research also suggests financial institutions are rethinking where sensitive information should reside.

Public cloud environments are increasingly viewed as presenting the highest breach risk, while many organisations see modern data lake architectures as offering stronger protection for critical information when combined with appropriate monitoring and telemetry.

As AI adoption accelerates across the financial sector, cybersecurity strategies are evolving beyond prevention alone.

Success will increasingly depend on understanding how data moves across complex digital environments, validating security controls continuously, and responding to threats before they become operational or regulatory incidents.

For an industry built on trust, maintaining that visibility may become just as important as deploying the next generation of AI itself.