Incident Score: Analysis & Impact (AMEMEREDEHIGCET1775075723)
The details regarding individual company incidents & reports gives you full view from every side.
Rankiteo Score Impact Analysis
Key Highlights From The Incident Analysis
- Timeline of Cetera Financial Group's Breach and lateral movement inside company's environment.
- Overview of affected data sets, including SSNs and PHI, and why they materially increase incident severity.
- How Rankiteo’s incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score.
- How this cyber incident impacts Cetera Financial Group Rankiteo cyber scoring and cyber rating.
- Rankiteo’s MITRE ATT&CK correlation analysis for this incident, with associated confidence level.
Full Incident Analysis Transcript
In this Rankiteo incident briefing, we review the Cetera Financial Group breach identified under incident ID AMEMEREDEHIGCET1775075723.
The analysis begins with a detailed overview of Cetera Financial Group's information like the linkedin page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/cetera-financial-group, the number of followers: 82970, the industry type: Financial Services and the number of employees: 2547 employees
After the initial compromise, the video explains how Rankiteo's incident engine converts technical details into a normalized incident score. The incident score before the incident was 663 and after the incident was 596 with a difference of -67 which is could be a good indicator of the severity and impact of the incident.
In the next step of the video, we will analyze in more details the incident and the impact it had on Cetera Financial Group and their customers.
Cetera Financial recently reported "Financial Firms Face Class Action Lawsuits Over Data Breaches", a noteworthy cybersecurity incident.
Cetera Financial and Ameriprise are facing class action lawsuits over alleged data breaches, with customers accusing both companies of failing to safeguard sensitive client information.
The disruption is felt across the environment, affecting Email Account and Salesforce Records, and exposing Names, Social Security numbers and Account details.
In response, moved swiftly to contain the threat with measures like Breach contained (Ameriprise), and stakeholders are being briefed through Failed to notify victims (Ameriprise).
Overall, the incident is a reminder of why proactive monitoring and strong governance matter.
Finally, we try to match the incident with the MITRE ATT&CK framework to see if there is any correlation between the incident and the MITRE ATT&CK framework.
The MITRE ATT&CK framework is a knowledge base of techniques and sub-techniques that are used to describe the tactics and procedures of cyber adversaries. It is a powerful tool for understanding the threat landscape and for developing effective defense strategies.
MITRE ATT&CK® Correlation Analysis
Rankiteo's analysis has identified several MITRE ATT&CK tactics and techniques associated with this incident, each with varying levels of confidence based on available evidence. Under the Initial Access tactic, the analysis identified Phishing: Spearphishing Link (T1566.002) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating unauthorized actor accessed an employee’s email account and Exploit Public-Facing Application (T1190) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating salesforce records compromised in ransomware attack. Under the Execution tactic, the analysis identified User Execution: Malicious File (T1204.002) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware attack by ShinyHunters. Under the Credential Access tactic, the analysis identified Brute Force: Password Guessing (T1110.001) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating unauthorized actor accessed an employee’s email account and Credentials from Password Stores (T1555) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating client data including names, Social Security numbers exposed. Under the Collection tactic, the analysis identified Data from Local System (T1005) with high confidence (90%), supported by evidence indicating 200GB of internal data compromised (Ameriprise) and Data from Information Repositories (T1213) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating salesforce records containing PII compromised. Under the Exfiltration tactic, the analysis identified Exfiltration Over C2 Channel (T1041) with moderate to high confidence (80%), supported by evidence indicating 200GB of internal data (Ameriprise) and Exfiltration Over Alternative Protocol (T1048) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating data breach with PII and account details exposed. Under the Impact tactic, the analysis identified Data Encrypted for Impact (T1486) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating ransomware attack by ShinyHunters and Defacement: Internal Defacement (T1491.001) with moderate confidence (50%), supported by evidence indicating salesforce records compromised. Under the Defense Evasion tactic, the analysis identified Impair Defenses: Disable or Modify Tools (T1562.001) with moderate confidence (60%), supported by evidence indicating failed to notify victims (Ameriprise) and Valid Accounts: Cloud Accounts (T1078.004) with moderate to high confidence (70%), supported by evidence indicating employee’s email account accessed; Salesforce records compromised. These correlations help security teams understand the attack chain and develop appropriate defensive measures based on the observed tactics and techniques.
Sources & References
- Cetera Financial Group Rankiteo Cyber Incident Details: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/cetera-financial-group/incident/AMEMEREDEHIGCET1775075723
- Cetera Financial Group CyberSecurity Rating page: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/cetera-financial-group
- Cetera Financial Group Rankiteo Cyber Incident Blog Article: https://blog.rankiteo.com/amemeredehigcet1775075723-edelman-financial-engines-mercer-advisors-cetera-financial-ameriprise-hightower-advisors-breach-march-2026/
- Cetera Financial Group CyberSecurity Score History: https://www.rankiteo.com/company/cetera-financial-group/history
- Cetera Financial Group CyberSecurity Incident Source: https://www.wealthmanagement.com/regulation-compliance/cetera-ameriprise-face-class-action-lawsuits-over-data-breaches
- Rankiteo A.I CyberSecurity Rating methodology: https://www.rankiteo.com/Images/rankiteo_algo.pdf
- Rankiteo TPRM Scoring methodology: https://static.rankiteo.com/model/rankiteo_tprm_methodology.pdf