Bank of England urges banks to prep cyber defences
Proactive Investors – The Bank of England has told lenders across the UK that they should begin improving defences against cyber-attacks as more companies face hacking attempts.
Banks, along with insurers and financial market infrastructures, have until March 2025 to get their defence systems and response strategies in line, the central bank said.
The request was written in a letter from Sarah Breeden, head of financial stability at the Bank of England, warning executives that future cyberattacks could plunge the entire financial system into crisis.
“Firms are expected to demonstrate through testing that they can remain within impact tolerance or, when they are unable to do so, to invest and take action,” Breeden said.
In 2023, Royal Mail (LON:) and trading software group ION suffered ransomware attacks from the Russian-linked gang LockBit.
The threat actors accounted for 54% of ransomware attacks in February, according to research from the NCC Group.
The hackers steal data from companies and then threaten to leak any sensitive information unless the victim pays a fee.
On Monday, outsourcing group Capita announced it had suffered a cyber-attack that saw more than 60,000 staff members unable to work on Friday.
Capita, which has billion-pound contracts with the NHS and BBC also runs military recruitment for the Ministry of Defence.
Last week, research from the National Cyber Security Centre found that one in ten organisations has malware traffic on their networks.
