Comparison Overview

Northern Trust

VS

Bank of America Merrill Lynch

Northern Trust

50 S. La Salle, Chicago, Illinois, US, 60603
Last Update: 2025-11-24

As a global leader in innovative wealth management, asset servicing and investment solutions, Northern Trust (Nasdaq: NTRS) is proud to guide the world’s most successful individuals, families and institutions by remaining true to our enduring principles of service, expertise and integrity. A globally recognized Fortune 500 Company in continuous operation since 1889, we’ve built a legacy of empowering clients to reach their goals with confidence. Since our roots as a trust bank, we’ve grown to a global presence with more than 24,000 employees in more than 20 countries and across five core business units: Wealth Management Asset Management Asset Servicing Technology Corporate Functions Join a Team That’s Made for Greater At Northern Trust, we refer to our employees as partners – with good reason. We understand that relationships are the key to our success. Here you’ll join a diverse and inclusive team of innovators with the drive to challenge the way things have always been done. Instead of choosing between a dynamic career and work-life balance, enjoy working with a team that supports your goals in the office and at home. We’ll help you get where you want to go without sacrificing what matters most to you. As of December 31 2024, Northern Trust had: $16.8 trillion assets under custody/administration $13.3 trillion in assets under custody $1.6 trillion in assets under management $156 billion in banking assets Stay connected with us: NT Careers Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ntcareers Northern Trust Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/northerntrustcompany/

NAICS: 52
NAICS Definition: Finance and Insurance
Employees: 29,579
Subsidiaries: 0
12-month incidents
0
Known data breaches
2
Attack type number
1

Bank of America Merrill Lynch

100 North Tryon Street, Charlotte, NC, 28255, US
Last Update: 2025-11-26
Between 750 and 799

From local communities to global markets, we are dedicated to shaping the future responsibly and helping clients thrive in a changing world. “Bank of America Merrill Lynch” is the marketing name for the global banking and global markets businesses of Bank of America Corporation. Bank of America is a marketing name for the Retirement Services business of Bank of America Corporation. Lending, derivatives, and other commercial banking activities are performed globally by banking affiliates of Bank of America Corporation, including Bank of America, N.A., Member FDIC. Securities, strategic advisory, and other investment banking activities are performed globally by investment banking affiliates of Bank of America Corporation (“Investment Banking Affiliates”), including, in the United States, BofA Securities, Inc., Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, and Merrill Lynch Professional Clearing Corp., all of which are registered broker-dealers and Members of SIPC, and in other jurisdictions, by locally registered entities. BofA Securities, Inc., Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated and Merrill Lynch Professional Clearing Corp. are registered as futures commission merchants with the CFTC and are members of the NFA.   Investment products: Are Not FDIC Insured May Lose Value Are Not Bank Guaranteed Any opinions, views, statements, estimates or projections (“posts”) posted on this web page are solely those of the individual author(s). As such, posts by an employee of BofAML or any of its affiliates are solely those of such employee or agent and do not necessarily reflect the views of BofAML. BofAML is not responsible for the content, or output of external websites. For Terms and Conditions and Disclaimers, please visit go.bofaml.com/social. Bank of America LinkedIn Community Guidelines can be found at: http://about.bankofamerica.com/en-us/social-media/linkedin-community-guidelines.html

NAICS: 52
NAICS Definition: Finance and Insurance
Employees: 17,432
Subsidiaries: 4
12-month incidents
0
Known data breaches
4
Attack type number
2

Compliance Badges Comparison

Security & Compliance Standards Overview

https://images.rankiteo.com/companyimages/northern-trust.jpeg
Northern Trust
ISO 27001
ISO 27001 certification not verified
Not verified
SOC2 Type 1
SOC2 Type 1 certification not verified
Not verified
SOC2 Type 2
SOC2 Type 2 certification not verified
Not verified
GDPR
GDPR certification not verified
Not verified
PCI DSS
PCI DSS certification not verified
Not verified
HIPAA
HIPAA certification not verified
Not verified
https://images.rankiteo.com/companyimages/bank-of-america-merrill-lynch.jpeg
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
ISO 27001
ISO 27001 certification not verified
Not verified
SOC2 Type 1
SOC2 Type 1 certification not verified
Not verified
SOC2 Type 2
SOC2 Type 2 certification not verified
Not verified
GDPR
GDPR certification not verified
Not verified
PCI DSS
PCI DSS certification not verified
Not verified
HIPAA
HIPAA certification not verified
Not verified
Compliance Summary
Northern Trust
100%
Compliance Rate
0/4 Standards Verified
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
0%
Compliance Rate
0/4 Standards Verified

Benchmark & Cyber Underwriting Signals

Incidents vs Financial Services Industry Average (This Year)

No incidents recorded for Northern Trust in 2025.

Incidents vs Financial Services Industry Average (This Year)

No incidents recorded for Bank of America Merrill Lynch in 2025.

Incident History — Northern Trust (X = Date, Y = Severity)

Northern Trust cyber incidents detection timeline including parent company and subsidiaries

Incident History — Bank of America Merrill Lynch (X = Date, Y = Severity)

Bank of America Merrill Lynch cyber incidents detection timeline including parent company and subsidiaries

Notable Incidents

Last 3 Security & Risk Events by Company

https://images.rankiteo.com/companyimages/northern-trust.jpeg
Northern Trust
Incidents

Date Detected: 08/2022
Type:Breach
Blog: Blog

Date Detected: 5/2014
Type:Breach
Attack Vector: Inadvertent Disclosure
Blog: Blog
https://images.rankiteo.com/companyimages/bank-of-america-merrill-lynch.jpeg
Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Incidents

Date Detected: 2/2025
Type:Breach
Attack Vector: Inadvertent Disclosure
Blog: Blog

Date Detected: 10/2024
Type:Breach
Blog: Blog

Date Detected: 4/2024
Type:Breach
Attack Vector: Human Error (Email Misconfiguration)
Blog: Blog

FAQ

Bank of America Merrill Lynch company demonstrates a stronger AI Cybersecurity Score compared to Northern Trust company, reflecting its advanced cybersecurity posture governance and monitoring frameworks.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch company has faced a higher number of disclosed cyber incidents historically compared to Northern Trust company.

In the current year, Bank of America Merrill Lynch company has reported more cyber incidents than Northern Trust company.

Neither Bank of America Merrill Lynch company nor Northern Trust company has reported experiencing a ransomware attack publicly.

Both Bank of America Merrill Lynch company and Northern Trust company have disclosed experiencing at least one data breach.

Neither Bank of America Merrill Lynch company nor Northern Trust company has reported experiencing targeted cyberattacks publicly.

Neither Northern Trust company nor Bank of America Merrill Lynch company has reported experiencing or disclosing vulnerabilities publicly.

Neither Northern Trust nor Bank of America Merrill Lynch holds any compliance certifications.

Neither company holds any compliance certifications.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch company has more subsidiaries worldwide compared to Northern Trust company.

Northern Trust company employs more people globally than Bank of America Merrill Lynch company, reflecting its scale as a Financial Services.

Neither Northern Trust nor Bank of America Merrill Lynch holds SOC 2 Type 1 certification.

Neither Northern Trust nor Bank of America Merrill Lynch holds SOC 2 Type 2 certification.

Neither Northern Trust nor Bank of America Merrill Lynch holds ISO 27001 certification.

Neither Northern Trust nor Bank of America Merrill Lynch holds PCI DSS certification.

Neither Northern Trust nor Bank of America Merrill Lynch holds HIPAA certification.

Neither Northern Trust nor Bank of America Merrill Lynch holds GDPR certification.

Latest Global CVEs (Not Company-Specific)

Description

Angular is a development platform for building mobile and desktop web applications using TypeScript/JavaScript and other languages. Prior to versions 19.2.16, 20.3.14, and 21.0.1, there is a XSRF token leakage via protocol-relative URLs in angular HTTP clients. The vulnerability is a Credential Leak by App Logic that leads to the unauthorized disclosure of the Cross-Site Request Forgery (XSRF) token to an attacker-controlled domain. Angular's HttpClient has a built-in XSRF protection mechanism that works by checking if a request URL starts with a protocol (http:// or https://) to determine if it is cross-origin. If the URL starts with protocol-relative URL (//), it is incorrectly treated as a same-origin request, and the XSRF token is automatically added to the X-XSRF-TOKEN header. This issue has been patched in versions 19.2.16, 20.3.14, and 21.0.1. A workaround for this issue involves avoiding using protocol-relative URLs (URLs starting with //) in HttpClient requests. All backend communication URLs should be hardcoded as relative paths (starting with a single /) or fully qualified, trusted absolute URLs.

Risk Information
cvss4
Base: 7.7
Severity: LOW
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:N/SC:H/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
Description

Forge (also called `node-forge`) is a native implementation of Transport Layer Security in JavaScript. An Uncontrolled Recursion vulnerability in node-forge versions 1.3.1 and below enables remote, unauthenticated attackers to craft deep ASN.1 structures that trigger unbounded recursive parsing. This leads to a Denial-of-Service (DoS) via stack exhaustion when parsing untrusted DER inputs. This issue has been patched in version 1.3.2.

Risk Information
cvss4
Base: 8.7
Severity: LOW
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:N/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:N/VA:H/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
Description

Forge (also called `node-forge`) is a native implementation of Transport Layer Security in JavaScript. An Integer Overflow vulnerability in node-forge versions 1.3.1 and below enables remote, unauthenticated attackers to craft ASN.1 structures containing OIDs with oversized arcs. These arcs may be decoded as smaller, trusted OIDs due to 32-bit bitwise truncation, enabling the bypass of downstream OID-based security decisions. This issue has been patched in version 1.3.2.

Risk Information
cvss4
Base: 6.3
Severity: LOW
CVSS:4.0/AV:N/AC:L/AT:P/PR:N/UI:N/VC:N/VI:L/VA:N/SC:N/SI:N/SA:N/E:X/CR:X/IR:X/AR:X/MAV:X/MAC:X/MAT:X/MPR:X/MUI:X/MVC:X/MVI:X/MVA:X/MSC:X/MSI:X/MSA:X/S:X/AU:X/R:X/V:X/RE:X/U:X
Description

Suricata is a network IDS, IPS and NSM engine developed by the OISF (Open Information Security Foundation) and the Suricata community. Prior to versions 7.0.13 and 8.0.2, working with large buffers in Lua scripts can lead to a stack overflow. Users of Lua rules and output scripts may be affected when working with large buffers. This includes a rule passing a large buffer to a Lua script. This issue has been patched in versions 7.0.13 and 8.0.2. A workaround for this issue involves disabling Lua rules and output scripts, or making sure limits, such as stream.depth.reassembly and HTTP response body limits (response-body-limit), are set to less than half the stack size.

Risk Information
cvss3
Base: 7.5
Severity: LOW
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H
Description

Suricata is a network IDS, IPS and NSM engine developed by the OISF (Open Information Security Foundation) and the Suricata community. In versions from 8.0.0 to before 8.0.2, a NULL dereference can occur when the entropy keyword is used in conjunction with base64_data. This issue has been patched in version 8.0.2. A workaround involves disabling rules that use entropy in conjunction with base64_data.

Risk Information
cvss3
Base: 7.5
Severity: LOW
CVSS:3.1/AV:N/AC:L/PR:N/UI:N/S:U/C:N/I:N/A:H