United Kingdom: Bank of England publishes financial sector resilience exercise findings
The Bank of England (BoE) has published high level findings of financial sector cyber simulation exercise that took place in November 2018.
Commissioned by the Cross Market Operational Resilience Group, jointly chaired by BoE and UK Finance, the exercise explored the financial sector’s resilience to a major cyber incident impacting the United Kingdom.
The exercise, concludes the regulator, demonstrated that recommendations from the previous sector exercise have been implemented and identified further opportunities for improvement.
The regulator notes the high level findings as including that there are:
- opportunities to improve the way firms coordinate at an operational level during incidents that impact the sector; and
- disparity in risk tolerance for suspending services could impact the functioning of the financial sector.
Other findings, notes the BoE, are that:
- recovery of services is impacted by differences in the way data is stored across the financial sector; and
- effective and consistent communications are key to maintaining customer and market confidence.
Alongside financial authorities, participants included 29 of the most systemically important firms and Financial Market Infrastructures. Participants responded to a severe but plausible cyber-attack scenario targeting the sector.