When AI Attacks the Bank: Data Forensics and Cyber-Security in U.S. Banking

Addictive intelligence enhances cyber-attacks. Banks in the United States must adopt new methods of verification and combating crimes to remain untouched by the element of threat.

When I was working on finance from 2018 to 2022, I helped to implement a system whereby the people are paid faster. I was in work through making work easier. I didn't spend too much time thinking about how bad guys can use Artificial Intelligence (AI) to break the systems that I helped build.
Presently, I am studying Cybersecurity at the master's degree level. I understand that these are much more difficult threats for the banks.

Hackers are by no means the only concern. Banks are also attacked by AI-driven scams, auto-theft, deep-fake voices and videos, and also smart and interconnected criminals.

In this paper, I summarize how U.S. banks can become stronger by applying my knowledge of money, data science, and the solution of crimes in cyberspace. I will discuss recent hacks, how AI attacks occur, what banks are lacking, improved approaches using data (such as graph analysis), and why this is important for the country's monetary infrastructure.

Recent Bad Examples
These two incidents are an indication of the changing nature of the danger.

In the year 2019, Capital One suffered a major data breach where more than 100 million customer records were hacked because of an insecure misconfiguration of firewall [1]. This just goes to show the important lesson that even the largest financial institutions are susceptible to basic mistakes, particularly in the area of cloud services [1]. Recently, in 2025, there has once again been a trend of increased attacks using AI solutions, as an interesting survey by LeakedSource showed that 87% of the security experts encountered such attacks last year [1]. This leads us to the central lesson, namely that artificial intelligence is already dramatically raising the scale and complexity of cyber threats.

These examples are examples of a systemic risk. Banks are all connected. They are using the same services on Cloud providers and partner companies. If a large bank or service is compromised, then the issue can spread very quickly to a number of other places.

How AI Changes the Attack
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a rapidly transforming part of cyber-attacks.

AI-Made Social Engineering: Hackers are writing fake emails (phishing), creating gravitas voices to cheat money from victims (BEC), and making fake videos of bosses or clients (deep-fakes). According to one report, banks around the world suffered $28.6 billion in 2025 due to the use of AI to increase fraudulent activity.

Auto-Phishing, Time Short, focused phishing campaigns, Anti-ion and Phishing: >Google Drive, Collaboration Tools Miracle, Supply Chain Attack, and more Automatically spying Reputation Sparta Attempt Red Border Attack: Spic and Span - Sustainable phishing Deccan. Spyware and is not simply - AI detect anomalies, find hidden data, identifying gap in network. Current antipsychotic detection - Comprehensive phishing Fast System Aware Advanced detect Vulnerabilities - Rapid security policy Smart device to Phishing Spam Protection. Manual drive encryption Frisign status - Invasion, robotic weapons also check is in phishing coordinated, which It was reported that the number of attacks through security holes on banks tripled in one year.

The AI models used by banks to detect fraud have therefore become new targets in turn. Hackers can fool about these fraud detection models.
This means that banks cannot simply rely on simple walls or file signature checks. They require more data analysis, better methods of establishing links, and an ability to unblock cyber-crimes in real time.

What Banks Are Missing Now
Government regulations monitor the safety of banks but there are still gaps.
• Banking authorities put emphasis on banks' security strategies and warn against the risks of their third-party vendors.

In regards to securities, a report indicated that the majority of the money of U.S. banks ($15.4 trillion) depends on third-party service providers.

Missing Pieces:
This means that many banks are not fully aware of all the third parties and third-party cloud services that they rely on.
Smart attacks using AI also remain invisible - old detection systems fail to see them.

Cyber-banks are also not always aware of the problem, but rather only after the event has taken place.

Many of the banks are not currently using modern data analysis tools that examine graphs of transactions or specify special AI to identify criminals that have infiltrated their systems.

In my previous employment, I learned that all money systems should have very clear space and process to view and audit everything. The same way I used to find money problems can be applied to cyber-security: you must visualize the data, correlate the information, and find anomalies in the data.

Simple Data-Driven Fixes
Banks should take advantage of this 4-step plan:

Construct a Map of Connections (The "Graph")
o Gather all usage information, including logins, money transfer, and file usage.
o Make a graph dots are customer, staff and accounts Line are transactions and logins.
o Detect suspicious connections by utilizing specific AI (Graph Neural Networks), which is more effective at detecting fraud.
o For example, any sudden transfer with a very large amount between two individuals who didn't use to do business with each other is flagged.
Recombination's of Anomaly Checks to Use
o Layer a lot of simple and smart tools and find out anomalous activities (e.g. bulk transactional checks, AI that identifies outlier users, etc.).
The following use case tools can be used for various security activities: Problem discovery, Alert, and Resolution.
Automated Crime Solving (Forensics)
With high-risk events flagged by the AI, the system should automatically open up the history of the accounts, a timeline of the criminal's progression and the behavior of the user in the past.
o Example: Have a good picture: Employee -> Outsider Vendor -> Initiated Payment -> Account modified
o Fast and modern tools should be developed by banks to detect and solve crimes enabled by the use of AI attacks.
Always Monitor and Slice and Dice%;
o Regularly listen to current alerts of new threats (such as suspicious website addresses and phishing techniques) from government and industry groups.
o Apply this new information for AI detection model improvement.

Why This is important to the Country
So the problem with making U.S. banks safe is not merely a matter of corporate responsibility; it is a public concern.

The government states that big banks could be targeted by attackers capable of cutting off the services of a significant number of people in the cyber space, leading to far-reaching issues.

If any cloud provider or a company providing a major payment system is successfully targeted, it could harm a lot of banks simultaneously, resulting in a loss of trust and money.

Government executives should ensure: mandatory reporting of attacks, same high-level security equipment for all banks, testing for AI-driven attacks, and increased checks for all outside vendor companies.

Conclusion
In my journey of being a finance manager and then a security researcher, I found out that systems break down when we neglect change. U.S. banks are no longer dealing with the world they have always known AI-powered attacks larger, faster, and more intelligent than the old defenses. The same general steps I used to repair money problems seeing the data, connecting the dots and finding weird stuff can be utilized for tackling cyber-crime.
With the concepts of mapping relationships, fusing detectors, accelerating crime-solving, and sharing threat proximity notifiers, banks can create powerful protection. This should be taken seriously by the government and banks as a risk to the country and not just a small problem with a computer.

What to do now While, if you're in a bank, start a plan to understand the connection of your system and see how good your security tools are when it comes to fighting AI attack. We need to act now.

For more, please follow the link below:
https://medium.com/@mrubel.student/cyber-resilience-of-u-s-banking-infrastructure-under-ai-driven-threats-119542dae875

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/shielding-americas-banks-ai-powered-cyber-defenses-financial-rubel-vr2le/?trackingId=LHKFc%2BtJQfyYf3H4TbAZxA%3D%3D

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When AI Attacks the Bank: Data Forensics and Cyber-Security in U.S. Banking

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