Shark-hunters: BBA mulls new role fighting crime
Cybercrime is top of the Bank of England’s list of threats to financial services, and the British Bankers’ Association (BBA) could be appointed to fight attacks on the system.
Rogue states, terrorists or criminals could all try to take down the payments infrastructure, and today a report was published on Waking Shark 2, a trial run of a cyber attack.
In the scenario, carried out late last year, banks had to deal with the attack by a hostile government.
Those taking part had to identify the problems, tell the regulator and work with other banks and finance firms to get a grip on the crisis.
Most of it went well with the bankers there certainly enjoying themselves while the authorities are pleased at the progress made since the previous trial run.
But there were some problems, mainly in notifying all the relevant regulators and authorities.
That is where the BBA could come in.
“There is no central industry coordination for financial sector information sharing and communication to the wider public and it was suggested that consideration should be given to allocating this role to a single coordination body from industry (possibly the BBA) to manage communications across the sector during an incident,” the report said.
That is an important new job for the BBA, should it choose to accept the mission.
The group took a leading role in representing banks during the financial crisis and are engaged in lobbying for the sector, but it has since suffered in the Libor scandal, as it administered the interbank interest rate.
Taking on this role could be a big boost to its reputation and reinstate some of the status lost in the last 18 months.
“Cyber-attacks pose a clear and present danger to our financial system. That’s why it’s so important that our industry conducts exercises to make banks better prepared to protect themselves and their customers from these threats,” said Andrew Rogan, senior policy director in charge of the BBA’s capital markets team.
“We will consider the recommendations in the Bank of England’s report carefully and are looking seriously at what role we could play in the future to combat these threats.”
Next time a trial is run – Waking Shark 3, presumably – the banks want to try an international test, working across borders and with other industries like telecoms.