The boss of one of many UK’s greatest banks has stated the specter of cyber assaults “retains me awake at evening”.
Ian Stuart, the CEO of HSBC UK, stated cyber safety was “prime of the agenda” for his banking group, and coping with IT vulnerabilities was an “huge” expense for the sector as an entire.
He stated: “It does fear me – we might be attacked and we’re being attacked on a regular basis.”
Mr Stuart and different financial institution bosses have been talking to the Commons Treasury Committee which has been taking proof on a spread of points affecting the business, together with how weak it’s to outages and cyber assaults.
In March, it emerged 9 main banks and constructing societies working within the UK accrued at the least 803 hours – the equal of 33 days – of tech outages previously two years.
In latest weeks, retailers Co-op and Marks and Spencer have skilled extreme disruption after being focused by hackers.
Lisa Forte, of the cyber safety firm Crimson Goat, advised BBC Information that Mr Stuart had made “an extremely necessary level”.
“Cyber assaults are growing in each quantity and severity,” she stated.
“Criminals are monetising assaults extra effectively and we’re at some extent now the place it very a lot is when not if companies will expertise an assault.”
Mr Stuart stated his banking group was spending tons of of hundreds of thousands of kilos bettering its IT techniques.
“I believe the sum of money banks – all of us – might be placing into our techniques is gigantic,” he stated.
“The defence mechanisms you place in are completely vital.”
Throughout his group, he stated they’re processing 1000 funds a second whereas making 8000 IT modifications and updates each week.
Barclays, Lloyds, Nationwide, Santander, NatWest, Danske Financial institution, Financial institution of Eire and Allied Irish Financial institution have additionally supplied info to the committee.
Between January 2023 and February this yr, they skilled 158 IT failures between them.
Vim Maru, CEO of Barclays, addressed MPS in regards to the Barclays outage which occurred on what was January pay day for many individuals.
Severe IT issues affected on-line banking for a number of days, left some individuals unable to maneuver dwelling – and will outcome within the financial institution going through compensation funds of £12.5m, a report has discovered.
Mr Maru apologised to clients, saying he was “deeply sorry for the disruption”. He stated there was no proof it was triggered a cyber incident or a malicious act.
Following the Barclays incident in January, about 1.2m individuals within the UK have been then affected by additional banking outages in February.
These issues occurred at Lloyds, TSB, Nationwide and HSBC.
