Banks across the UK will be taking part in a threat exercise next month to see if they can handle serious cyber attacks.
Operation Waking Shark 2 follows a similar stress test from
2011 and will be overseen by the Bank of England, the Treasury and the
Financial Conduct Authority.
Cyber preparations
Described as a cyber “war game”,
the tests were described by one source as the simulation of a “very
severe” attack. “This is absolutely vital work and will enable us to see
how our defences work in the event of a real attack and what areas need
to be improved,” the source said.
The Bank of England’s Financial Policy Committee (FPC) has been talking up the need for cyber tests
across the nation’s financial institutions. It said last week that it
wanted to see a “concrete plan in place to deliver a high level of
protection against cyber attacks for each institution at the core of the
financial system”.
The body said action plans should be in place by the first quarter of 2014.
Results of the latest Operation Waking Shark will be used to create benchmarks for financial bodies to live up to.
Recent attacks on Barclays and Santander, where millions
could have been stolen, used fairly crude methods, involving a remote
control device attached to machines by fake IT workers.
Heavy distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks also rocked a number of US banks throughout last year and at the start of 2013.