The Federal Reserve Board has released its 2025 Cybersecurity and Financial System Resilience Report, outlining its continued efforts to protect the financial sector from growing cyber threats. Mandated by Congress under the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021, the report—now in its fifth year—details the Board’s cybersecurity policies, supervisory actions, and assessments of current and emerging risks.
The report underscores cybersecurity as a top priority across the Federal Reserve System, including the 12 regional Reserve Banks and the institutions it supervises. It focuses on three core areas: risk management frameworks, operational activities to address threats, and a forward-looking view on evolving risks to financial system resilience.
Strengthening Risk Management
The Board highlighted several internal and external efforts to enhance cybersecurity posture. Internally, the Federal Reserve Board and Reserve Banks have implemented a layered security architecture that incorporates continuous monitoring, employee training, and advanced threat detection. In 2024, the Board continued to refine its information security program, emphasizing real-time threat intelligence sharing and stricter access controls across systems.
Supervisory policies were also updated to account for emerging technologies, such as cloud services and third-party risk. The Board’s supervisory framework includes cybersecurity assessments conducted through both regular examinations and targeted reviews of financial institutions and their vendors.
Evolving Threat Landscape
The report calls attention to several trends shaping the threat environment:
- The growing sophistication of nation-state actors and ransomware groups.
- An expanding attack surface due to increased digital transformation and remote access capabilities.
- Greater dependence on third-party service providers, which introduces new supply chain risks.
The Board warns that artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled attacks could emerge as a disruptive force, complicating threat detection and mitigation in the near future.
Looking Ahead
As cyber threats grow more complex and persistent, the Federal Reserve emphasizes that maintaining system resilience requires constant adaptation. The Board plans to further enhance its supervisory toolkit, expand staff expertise in cyber risk, and promote stronger collaboration with industry and federal partners.
Click here to read the full report.
(AI was used in part to facilitate this article.)
