Cybersecurity and financial systems: a global perspective on research fragmentation and innovation gaps

This paper aims to examine the research output on cybersecurity in financial institutions from 2000 to June 2025 through an extensive bibliometric analysis. This paper uses the WoS database and bibliometrix package in RStudio to analyze cybersecurity papers. Using 2,005 publications from WoS Core Collection database, this paper maps the intellectual structure, thematic evolution, and collaboration patterns of the field following PRISMA 2020 guidelines and established bibliometric techniques. The findings show a rapidly expanding but highly fragmented research landscape. Publication activity is dispersed across a large number of journals and international collaboration patterns reflect differences in national research systems and policy environments. The results show a shift from foundational information security and risk management topics toward data-driven and AI-enabled cybersecurity applications. However, technical research streams remain weakly integrated with governance and regulation. Research on cyber insurance highlight a significant gap in the literature, reflecting structural barriers remaining policy-oriented, and empirical evidence is limited. The current evidence suggests that cybersecurity research in financial institutions has developed in parallel streams rather than within a coherent analytical framework. This paper contributes an integrative, finance-specific mapping of cybersecurity research and identifies persistent fragmentation and innovation gaps with implications for governance and policy practitioners.