"Another indication of the financial industry's fast response to current events and emerging threats was the presence of disaster recovery and business continuity (49 percent) among the top five security initiatives," Stathos said.

"The importance of a business continuity plan, following the recent string of natural disasters around the globe, is shown by 88 percent of organizations confirming that they have put in place an enterprise-wide business continuity management program."

Priest added that Deloitte's survey shows that financial institutions are attentive to the fast-paced and changing security environment.

"They are shifting priorities and starting to take necessary measures to mitigate the various security risks and challenges. However, while it is only natural to shift focus to the most imminent, emerging threats, organizations should avoid being blindsided and must strive to maintain a balanced, more holistic approach to their security operations and initiatives," she said.

Interestingly, security awareness and training dropped off the top five initiatives this year. While 96 percent of respondents were concerned about employee misconduct involving IT systems, only a third (34 percent) have provided their staff with some form of information security and privacy training over the past 12 months. The most common mediums that financial institutions use for security training and awareness are Web page alerts and e-mails (63 percent). Other, perhaps more effective methods, such as orientation training (35 percent) and recognition of exemplary behaviour (9 percent), ranked low in use.