Banks prepare for cyber attacks

THE banking industry has ended the week in a cyber-attack battle after the Bank of England hosted a sector-wide day of war games.

About 40 financial institutions battled it out alongside the Treasury, the City watchdog and industry trade body UK Finance yesterday as the Bank created a series of attacks “designed to test the financial sector’s resilience to a major cyber incident impacting the UK”.

A spokesman would not comment on which scenarios were being tested, and banks which fared badly will not be publicly named.

“The exercise will help authorities and firms identify improvements to our collective response arrangements, improving the resilience of the sector as a whole,” the Bank said.

However, cyber-security expert Robert Schifreen, a former hacker, told the BBC’S Today programme that the exercise was unrealistic. He said: “When you get hacked, it’s probably going to be on a Sunday afternoon, half the people you need to contact are going to be away on holiday.”