Top 3 Industries with the Highest Number of Critical Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities from Datami Practice

A company can be compromised quietly. Without blue screens of death and without video calls from stereotypical hackers in Guy Fawkes masks. In most cases, everything appears normal: emails arrive, sales continue, and employees keep working. And then it turns out that “outsiders” have been inside the system for months.

The most troubling part of such incidents is not even the breach itself, but the fact that time almost always works in favor of the attackers. The longer they remain unnoticed, the more they can accomplish: collecting access credentials, locating backup copies, understanding where the organization’s weak points are, and preparing an attack that targets the most vulnerable part of the cybersecurity perimeter.

At the same time, each industry tends to have its own “Achilles’ heel” when it comes to vulnerabilities. What is critical for fintech may not necessarily be critical for manufacturing or healthcare organizations. However, they all share one common factor: attacks succeed only when vulnerabilities exist within the cybersecurity environment.

In this article, we will outline which industries, based on the analysis of our projects, have the highest number of critical cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

Vulnerability levels and what we considered when compiling this ranking

A cybersecurity vulnerability is a weakness in security that can allow an attacker to gain access to a system to perform malicious actions (for example, stealing data or blocking access to a resource).

Such weaknesses can become entry points for a cyberattack at any moment. To understand the severity and real level of risk they pose, vulnerabilities are classified by their level of criticality:

• critical: allow attackers to gain control over a system or cause severe consequences;
• high: create significant risk and may lead to substantial losses;
• medium: have limited impact or require additional conditions to be exploited;
• low: do not pose a direct threat but indicate weaknesses in security;
• informational: reveal technical details that may help prepare an attack.

When determining the severity level, the following factors are considered:

• the complexity of exploitation;
• the scale of potential impact;
• the value of the assets at risk.

There is a certain correlation between a company’s industry and the criticality level of its cybersecurity vulnerabilities. We were interested in comparing the average number of critical vulnerabilities per project with the industry sector of the clients.

For this analysis, we used last year’s cases, including projects for pharmaceutical and insurance organizations, blockchain and fintech companies, software developers, and healthcare institutions, as well as representatives of e-commerce, regulatory technology, and other sectors.

Top 3 industries with the highest number of critical vulnerabilities

Based on the analysis of Datami projects, we obtained the following results: the industries with the highest number of vulnerabilities with the most severe potential consequences (downtime, fines, reputational damage, or even business closure) are finance, software development, and fintech.

1. Finance

On average, Datami specialists identified the highest number of critical vulnerabilities per case in companies within the financial sector. In this industry, the consequences of a cyber incident quickly become public and are often measured in millions. For financial organizations, a vulnerability exploited by attackers can rapidly translate into direct financial losses and a surge of complaints from dissatisfied customers.

This does not mean that the financial sector is less secure. On the contrary, it invests more in cybersecurity than most other industries. In practice, we also see that what may be a weak point for other sectors is often already under continuous monitoring and control in finance.

However, the financial sector is also more complex and highly digitalized. Companies operate with sophisticated architectures, dozens of integrated systems, legacy solutions, open APIs, and 24/7 online services. Financial institutions are also actively implementing open banking, cloud services, fintech integrations, and AI solutions, changes that often occur faster than updates to security processes. For this reason, we believe the finance sector tends to have the highest number of critical vulnerabilities.

Based on our practical experience, the following critical vulnerabilities are typical for cybersecurity in financial companies:

• Vulnerabilities in key service channels (web portals, mobile applications, APIs): these can allow access to customer data or manipulation of transactions.
• Weaknesses in access confirmation and recovery processes: attackers may intercept or rebind an account and then act on behalf of the client.
• Security gaps in integrations (payment gateways, notification services, contractors, identity verification services): these may allow attackers to bypass the main security perimeter.
• Gaps in monitoring and incident response: incidents may start small but escalate quickly if there is no rapid “detect and contain” response scenario.

These issues are not theoretical scenarios but real risks we encounter in practice. For example, in a project for a large financial institution, the Datami team conducted a secure code review and a penetration test, identifying 7 critical and 15 high vulnerabilities, including the possibility of a DoS attack on a call center through the mass creation of callback requests.

Another recent example is a case involving a brokerage company in the online betting sector that approached us after a series of DDoS attacks. The goal was to ensure that no one could exploit the platform’s functionality “under the cover” of these incidents. By conducting a black-box penetration test of two web applications and their API, we identified potential entry points and discovered vulnerabilities that could have triggered a serious security incident.

2. Software development

A large number of critical vulnerabilities among software developers is not the result of a weak security culture but rather the nature of the industry itself: the scale and complexity of products, as well as the speed of releases. SaaS and product companies operate in an environment of frequent releases and continuous feature updates. They typically have a large attack surface, rely on numerous third-party dependencies, and process data belonging to many clients.

In this sector, business logic is often more complex than the technical implementation itself, and the consequences of incidents almost always extend beyond a single company. A flaw in a product used by clients or a weakness in a payment module can quickly become a widespread risk. As a result, not only is the product affected, but also the businesses that rely on it.

For the software development industry, we highlight four critical vulnerabilities that can make the consequences particularly severe:

• Access to payment components or transaction processing modules: creates the risk of direct impact on operations and financial flows.
• Weak authentication and access control: when a single compromised account opens too many doors.
• Insecure data transmission channels: increase the likelihood of financial data leakage and potential extortion.
• Outdated components in critical systems: known vulnerabilities in dependencies that remain in production environments.

One example from our practice involves cooperation with a software development company that builds solutions for payment processing and transaction management. The client required strong protection of financial data and was preparing for PCI DSS compliance. We conducted a black-box penetration test of the web applications and servers supporting the payment infrastructure. During testing, Datami pentesters identified 15 vulnerabilities, including 5 critical ones, which could have provided attackers with access to the payment processor.

3. Fintech

Fintech has its own specifics that any disruption here almost always results in direct abuse: someone bypasses the rules, withdraws assets, undermines trust in transactions, or blocks access to funds. In addition, the industry operates at the intersection of multiple technologies: exchanges, payment providers, KYC services, and partner APIs. While open APIs are convenient, they also create a large attack surface: the more connection points there are, the higher the risks, as a single mistake can trigger a chain reaction. Web3 introduces an additional layer of responsibility: once a smart contract is deployed, it cannot simply be quickly fixed and redeployed, and any flaw effectively becomes part of the product.

In our view, fintech has more critical vulnerabilities than many other sectors, not because it is less secure, but because it evolves rapidly, involves high-value risks, contains numerous configuration points, and relies on complex architecture and business logic. Logical vulnerabilities appear here more often than classic technical ones and frequently reach critical severity.

We can highlight three groups of typical vulnerabilities that are critical for the cybersecurity of fintech companies:

• Flaws in operational logic: when system rules can be bypassed to produce a financial outcome rather than merely provide access to data.
• Vulnerabilities in the “financial core” (wallets, smart contracts, settlement modules): a single issue can quickly escalate into significant financial losses.
• Vulnerabilities that cannot be quickly rolled back: this is particularly critical in Web3, where fixing issues after deployment can be complex, expensive, or sometimes impossible.

The cost of cybersecurity errors in fintech companies is extremely high, which makes early detection and remediation essential. This is illustrated by our case involving a smart contract audit for a Web3 company before launching its token. We joined the project at a stage when the product was already preparing to enter the market. During a white-box audit of two smart contracts, the Datami team identified 40 vulnerabilities, including 2 critical ones. Had these issues not been detected before launch, the client could have faced a clear and uncompromising scenario: a complete loss of trust in the project and, most likely, its shutdown.

Summary of our top:

Interestingly, in another of our rankings of the most vulnerable industries (where we determined the top not by severity but by the number of vulnerabilities found per project), these three industries also appear in the top positions, though for different reasons.

How to stop being a “vulnerable industry”

There is no universal recipe in cybersecurity. That is why we recommend that our clients build their protection strategy not around trendy tools but around industry logic: clearly identify what must never be compromised and where problems are most likely to occur.

This recommendation applies not only to representatives of the industries in our ranking, but to any company that takes cybersecurity seriously. Critical vulnerabilities are not exclusive to finance, fintech, or software development. They can arise in any organization, regardless of the sector. If your business is not in the “high-risk top,” it does not mean you do not have your own critical points.

The table below provides examples of cybersecurity services and solutions that we offer to companies from our top three industries.

Conclusion

Critical vulnerabilities emerge where system complexity intersects with the high cost of error and the speed of change. This is exactly what the analysis of Datami projects has shown: finance, software development, and fintech lead the ranking not because they neglect security, but because they operate in high-risk environments.

Our ranking is not about the “worst” industries. It highlights that a standard approach to cybersecurity is no longer sufficient. The key question is not whether vulnerabilities exist, but whether you know where they could cause the greatest impact. That is why it is crucial to identify and test these points before someone else exploits them.

Identifying critical weaknesses during a security audit is always cheaper and safer than recovering after a successful attack. Do not let time work against you: build your security system in advance, taking into account the realities of your industry.