Several UK banks and financial market infrastructures experienced cyber attacks, some of which disrupted service, in the past six months according to the Bank of England.
“While losses have been small relative to UK banks’ operational risk capital requirements, they have revealed vulnerabilities. If these vulnerabilities were exploited to disrupt services, then the cost to the financial system could be significant and borne by a large number of institutions,” the Bank of England wrote in its November Financial Stability Report.
The Bank of England’s earlier 2013 H2 Systemic Risk Survey found that half of those surveyed cited risks from cyber attack as an operational risk they face. It defined cyber attack as an individual or a group that seeks to exploit vulnerabilities to disrupt services for financial gain.
Concerns that high-volume distributed denial of service attacks (DDoS) that hit US financial institutions at the end of 2102 and start of 2013 would impact UK banks and financial systems appeared to prove groundless.