Kalyeena Makortoff
It is every bank boss’s worst nightmare: a panicked phone call informs them a cyber-attack has crippled the IT system, rapidly unleashing chaos across the entire UK financial industry.
As household names in other industries, including Marks & Spencer, grapple with the fallout from such hacks, banking executives will be acutely aware that, for them, the stakes are even higher.
Within hours of a successful bank hack, millions of direct debits could fail, leaving rents, mortgages and wages unpaid. Online banking may be blocked, cash machine withdrawals denied, and commuters left in limbo as buses and petrol stations reject payments. News of the attack could spark panic, leading to a run on rival lenders, as customers pull money from their accounts amid fear the disruption could spread.
This situation may seem far-fetched but it is not a long way off from the government’s “reasonable worst-case scenario” if a sophisticated cyber-attack hit a big UK bank. With the financial industry among 14 sectors categorised as “critical national infrastructure”, it is no surprise that a hack is listed on the national risk register, which models some of the biggest threats facing the UK.
Billions of pounds are being spent preventing the kind of devastating attacks that shut down systems at three retailers, Harrods, the Co-op and M&S, this spring.
“The amount of money [that] banks, all of us, will be spending on our systems is enormous today. And it has to be,” the UK chief executive of HSBC, Ian Stuart, told MPs last month. “We are being attacked all the time.”
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