With the official sunset of the FFIEC Cybersecurity Assessment Tool (CAT) approaching, banks across the country are asking the same question: “What comes next?” For many institutions, the CAT has long served as the cornerstone of their cybersecurity self-assessment strategy. But with the CAT no longer being maintained, the need for a modern, forward-looking replacement is urgent.
At Finosec, we’re helping financial institutions confidently transition into a more efficient and up-to-date approach to cybersecurity governance. Step one of our new cybersecurity assessment process starts right where the CAT began, with Inherent Risk. But we’ve expanded and modernized the process to reflect today’s evolving threats and technologies.
Continuing Where the CAT Left Off
Finosec’s transition plan starts with what institutions already have in place. If your organization has completed the FFIEC CAT in the past, your existing answers won’t go to waste. We’ll begin by importing your CAT responses directly into the Finosec platform, saving you time and effort.
This foundation allows you to hit the ground running. Once those answers are in the system, the platform will guide you through the process of confirming them. You’ll validate the information you already provided, ensuring it’s still accurate, and then expand upon it with additional updates.
Why Update the Inherent Risk Profile?
The FFIEC CAT hasn’t been updated since 2017, and the cybersecurity landscape has changed dramatically since then. Banks now face threats from AI-driven attacks, deepfake fraud, real-time payment risks, and cloud-centric infrastructure challenges that weren’t top of mind nearly a decade ago.
To address these gaps, Finosec has introduced a new section within the Inherent Risk Profile called “Emerging Technologies.” This addition provides financial institutions with the opportunity to assess modern-day risks that the original CAT doesn’t cover.
We’ve gone beyond a simple lift-and-shift of your CAT responses. Our team has carefully curated a new set of questions that reflect today’s banking environment. This ensures your institution is prepared not only for existing cybersecurity concerns, but also for the next generation of challenges.
A Familiar Yet Streamlined Process
Change can be daunting, especially when it comes to regulatory frameworks. That’s why we’ve designed the transition to be familiar and intentional. The Finosec Cybersecurity Assessment closely mimics the original FFIEC CAT structure to reduce learning curves and increase adoption.
While Step One focuses on inherent risk, upcoming phases of the assessment process will walk through controls and reporting in a similar way. By following the recognizable flow of the original CAT, financial institutions can confidently adopt a new framework without starting from scratch.
And it’s not just a copy-paste of the old tool. We’ve intentionally optimized the workflow, making it faster and easier to update, validate, and expand your cybersecurity assessment with automation, intelligence, and guided navigation through Regi Ranger, Finosec’s secure AI assistant.
Designed for Today’s Banking Environment
Every change we’ve made has been rooted in one key goal: making cybersecurity governance smarter and more relevant for today’s banks.
- Updated Risk Categories – Address modern challenges such as API integrations, cloud dependencies, and evolving payment rails.
- Guided Navigation – Use AI to import, verify, and expand your existing CAT data with ease.
- Platform Integration – Work within a platform that centralizes risk, controls, and reporting in one location, no more spreadsheets or disjointed documents.
By building on what worked in the CAT and modernizing where it fell behind, Finosec is delivering a next-generation cybersecurity assessment tool that meets the needs of today’s financial institutions.
What’s Next?
This is just the beginning.
Step One helps your institution redefine its Inherent Risk Profile in a more comprehensive, forward-thinking way. Next, we’ll move into Step Two: Controls, which continues the journey by aligning your control maturity levels with your updated risk landscape.
We understand that moving away from a long-standing regulatory tool like the CAT can feel like a big leap. But with Finosec, that transition is structured, supported, and grounded in both regulatory familiarity and technological advancement.
Let Finosec be your guide as you modernize your cybersecurity assessment process, starting with what you already know and trust, and elevating it to meet the demands of a new era. Ready to take the next step? Learn more about the full transition plan and how we’re simplifying governance for banks like yours by attending our Sunset of the CAT webinar.
