Top 4 Most Vulnerable Industries According to Datami

Often, a company believes that nothing will happen to it because it has an antivirus, a system administrator, and a password on corporate email. And it seems that this is enough - at least as long as everything works.

But “as long as everything works” and “as long as nothing has happened” are not the same thing. Hackers do not wait for an invitation and do not warn about their visit. They look for the easiest path: an open port, a forgotten test account, an integration that was connected a year ago and hasn’t been touched since. These may seem like minor things, but they are exactly what most often open the door to the internal network.

At the same time, some industries are hit more often than others - not because they are irresponsible or don’t invest in protection. Simply by their nature, they have more potential entry points, sensitive data, and therefore more reasons for someone dishonest to deliberately take an interest in them.

In this article, we will share conclusions from our own experience about which industries have the most vulnerabilities and why they ended up in our anti-ranking.

What is a cybersecurity vulnerability?

To break through protection or steal valuable information, an attacker needs to find an “entry point” through which they can get inside.

A cybersecurity vulnerability is a weak spot in a system or process that can be used to gain access, steal data, or disrupt a company’s operations. It is dangerous simply because it exists, regardless of whether anyone exploits it or not. A vulnerability can hang over a business like the sword of Damocles for years, only to strike at the most painful moment.

The reasons why weak spots exist in cybersecurity are almost always the same:

• Technological debt. Companies retain outdated systems and “temporary” solutions that were never meant to be used for years, but now support key processes. They are difficult to update and “risky to touch,” so over time, they become convenient entry points.
• Human factor. Employees click on phishing emails, fall for password reset requests, use “creative” passwords like qwerty, and attackers take advantage of this.
• Complex infrastructure. Clouds, integrations, external services, and partners create many “connection gateways.” It is often easier for a hacker to enter through a poorly protected contractor than to break through the armored doors of the main system.
• Lack of time and resources. Businesses change quickly, new services and solutions appear, but order in access rights, configurations, and control does not keep up with these changes. As a result, the critical threat is created not by one major failure, but by many small gaps in the system.

4 industries with the highest number of cybersecurity vulnerabilities

We compiled this ranking based on statistics from our cases. We analyzed the average number of vulnerabilities per project across industries and selected four sectors where the most risks were identified. They are characterized by many entry points, contractors, and loopholes in access and configurations.

In our top list are healthcare organizations, software developers, financial and fintech companies:

1. Healthcare

This sector is the leader in the number of vulnerabilities per case. Clinics have many heterogeneous digital systems, some of which were historically implemented out of necessity and have been operating for years without architectural restructuring. At the same time, the industry faces strict regulatory requirements for protecting sensitive data, while budgets are often only sufficient for equipment, staff, and operating expenses. As a result, the healthcare sector is characterized by a high “level” of risks distributed across all layers of infrastructure.

Here are typical vulnerabilities in medical and pharmaceutical organizations that we most often identify:

• Weak account protection: simple passwords, lack of two-factor authentication, shared access, no control over who logs in, and from where.
• Unsafe external entry points: poorly protected patient portals and public web services that make it easier to initiate an attack.
• Integrations and external services: laboratories, insurance providers, booking services, contractors.
• Low incident readiness: no clear action plan, no tested scenarios defining who does what if part of the systems become unavailable.

An example of the multilayered nature of vulnerabilities in the medical sector from Datami’s practice is a security assessment of an educational medical platform. Our client was preparing for HIPAA certification and wanted to check the level of protection to eliminate all potential risks. We conducted a web platform pentest and an Azure cloud infrastructure pentest and identified more than 30 vulnerabilities, the exploitation of which could have led to unnoticed account compromise and subsequent leakage of sensitive data.

2. Fintech

Companies that combine financial services with modern technologies ranked second in our top list. Internal cybersecurity does not always keep pace with the rapid growth of fintech companies. The product is launched and scaled, new payment scenarios appear, along with mobile applications, user accounts, and APIs for merchants. And all of this must operate 24/7.

From our company’s practical experience, we can highlight the following typical cybersecurity vulnerabilities in fintech systems:

• Poorly designed login and access recovery flows: when passwords can be guessed, sessions intercepted, or attempt limits bypassed.
• Vulnerable APIs and partner integrations: the connections between fintech platforms and payment providers, KYC services, CRM systems, and analytics often become targets for attackers.
• Flaws in financial transaction logic: when the issue is not a breach itself, but the fact that a scenario can be used in an unintended way - for example, bypassing checks or gaining access to someone else’s data.
• Insufficient protection against automated attacks: mass login attempts, code brute-forcing, attacks on forms, and public endpoints.

Datami regularly encounters similar issues in practice. For example, in one case involving testing of a fintech platform’s KYC module, the client had already noticed suspicious attempts to bypass KYC ahead of an audit and wanted to understand how realistic it was for outsiders to infiltrate the system. 

During the assessment, we identified 12 vulnerabilities, 3 of which were critical. The most dangerous aspect of such a scenario is not just data leakage, but the possibility of entering the system through a “back door,” as this could lead to the platform being flooded with fake identities, fraudulent transactions, regulatory consequences, and an avalanche of claims from partners.

3. Finance

In traditional financial companies such as banks or insurance providers, cybersecurity is usually treated with the utmost seriousness. However, it is worth noting that vulnerabilities here most often arise not due to a lack of attention, but because of the scale and complexity of processes. Such organizations have many internal systems, branches, contractors, and points of interaction with government and commercial services.

Typical vulnerabilities in financial companies include:

• Weak account protection: attacks via email, fraudulent requests, and interception of access to work tools.
• Weak points in customer communications: contact forms, user accounts, mobile applications, and especially APIs.
• Misconfigured internal access rights: when permissions are granted “with excess,” roles are not reviewed, and employee terminations do not always automatically revoke system access.
• Outdated components in the infrastructure: large organizations always have systems that are difficult, expensive, or “not a priority” to update, and these are the ones that accumulate risks.

One of Datami’s clients almost learned firsthand what this can lead to. During a cybersecurity audit of a bank, we identified a record 106 issues, including many critical ones. The company faced a potentially devastating impact across several areas: from data leaks and compromise to disruption of the call center and other service channels. Thanks to a timely code security review and pentesting of the bank’s digital resources, these risks did not turn into incidents and were eliminated in advance.

4. Software Development

Completing our list of the four most vulnerable industries is software developers. During software creation, the product is constantly evolving: alpha, beta, and subsequent versions, new features, separate development and testing environments, remote teams, and contractors. In such a dynamic environment, cybersecurity can easily be pushed to the background: first, the release deadline must be met, and security testing comes later.

Typical cybersecurity vulnerabilities in software development companies include:

• Authentication flaws: when login and access recovery mechanisms are implemented in a way that allows them to be bypassed or misused.
• Vulnerable third-party components: libraries and dependencies are updated unevenly, leaving known issues within the application.
• Weak protection of development infrastructure: repositories, CI/CD pipelines, test environments, and access keys that live longer than they should and sometimes end up in the wrong hands.
• Lack of regular independent assessment: excessive confidence in internal capabilities and the belief that vulnerabilities can be found without involving external experts.

These points are well illustrated by a cybersecurity assessment case for a developer of digital identity solutions. During a white-box pentest, our team identified 9 vulnerabilities, including two critical ones. Had they not been fixed before release, the client could have faced compromised authentication, loss of trust in the product, and a chain reaction of negative responses from users who relied on the system.

Let’s summarize the top in a table:

By the way, in another of our rankings of industries by the criticality of discovered vulnerabilities, these industries are also at the top.

Industry approach to cybersecurity: What Datami offers

There is no single universal cybersecurity solution, so we recommend that our clients build systemic protection around the specifics of their particular industry rather than limiting themselves to installing automated scanners.

Datami operates precisely on this principle: first, we analyze what is critical for the client’s business and where something is most likely to go wrong. Then we offer specific cybersecurity solutions - from external perimeter pentesting to preparing companies for strict international audits and compliance (for example, HIPAA).

Here are our key services for identifying cybersecurity vulnerabilities:

1. Penetration testing (pentest).

By simulating real attacks, Datami’s ethical hackers identify vulnerabilities and demonstrate how attackers see your cybersecurity system. Our team conducts pentesting of external and internal perimeters, web applications, APIs, mobile apps, cloud environments, and other assets.

2. 24/7 monitoring and protection.

Round-the-clock attack detection and prevention is carried out using Datami’s proprietary solution - DataGuard, based on Cloudflare, which includes protection against DDoS, bots, and malicious activity with threat blocking upon detection.

3. Smart contract audits.

A solution we offer for Web3 projects. Audits help identify vulnerabilities in logic and implementation before release and listing, reducing the risk of asset loss and incidents that cannot be quickly “rolled back” after launch.

4. Reverse engineering. 

This involves analyzing applications and files to understand what is inside: whether there are vulnerabilities, malicious inserts, or suspicious behavior. We use this method when standard checks are not enough, and a deeper analysis is required.

For the financial sector and fintech, the priority is transaction continuity and protection of the “financial flows,” which we ensure through round-the-clock monitoring, DDoS protection, and deep audits of APIs or smart contracts. In healthcare and software development, we shift the focus to protecting sensitive data and product security before release, so that a vulnerability in the code does not become a problem for thousands of end users.

Conclusion

Vulnerabilities exist in every industry - this is the modern reality of digital business. But what matters is not the mere idea that a company could be hacked, but understanding exactly how this happens in your sector and what it could cost. Knowing your industry specifics is the first step toward cybersecurity that works not for attractive reports, but for real results.

And one more thing worth fixing at the management decision level: cybersecurity is not an “IT expense.” It is business insurance with a measurable cost that provides protection against downtime, loss of trust, contract disruptions, and expensive recovery. Proper cybersecurity does not hinder growth. On the contrary, it makes growth sustainable.