The financial services industry is putting itself at security risk thanks to poor quality software code, according to analysis from Cast.
Cast analysed over one billion lines of code across 1850 applications submitted by more than 325 organisations in eight countries, grading 'health factors' such as security and reliability.
The research shows that financial services firms are particularly susceptible to security risk, ranking as the worst sector, behind the likes of retail and telecoms and top scorer government.
"Lack of security architecture combined with porous code in legacy systems produce easy targets for hackers. This is especially concerning in financial services applications," says Bill Curtis, chief scientist, Cast Research Labs.
The research also shows that small teams of under 10 people perform best across most areas of structural quality, while teams over 20 do worst.
Adds Curtis: "Despite the push to ‘go digital’ our Crash Report findings indicate there is a significant amount of bad code lingering in enterprise systems. The takeaway for IT is clear: poor software quality is exposing many businesses to excessive risk."