SWIFT panel: Pessimism over cyber risk 25 April 2018London Reporter: Jenna Lomax
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Some 84 percent of an audience at this year’s SWIFT Business Forum in London thought cyber security was a main concern in financial services and the community needs to do more to tackle it.
A further 7 percent thought the concern was over-hyped, while nine percent were unsure.
One panelist said: “There is a lot of scaremongering in the industry at the moment” and added “constant hype and drive [surrounding cyber crime] isn’t doing us any favours”.
“We [the industry] need to do something about how we get the message around to take cyber crime seriously, but at the same time, I’m frustrated with the hype put around this when there’s so much good we’ve been doing that’s not seen.”
He also commented that artificial intelligence has “a key role in security, but the industry need to get past the hype that it’ll replace human efficiency, we still need to put human intelligence first. Mandatory change in our business is taking so much resource and money to deliver that it’s detracting from efforts to tackle cyber risk”.
He further questioned: “Is the regulator wrong?”, to which another panelist debated: “We need to work with regulators —mandatory requirements do bring action.”
In a separate poll, the moderator asked the audience what the longer term outlook for cyber crime in financial services would look like: optimistic, pessimistic or something else.
Some 57 percent said they had a pessimistic view, while a further 27 percent said they had an optimistic view but only if there is continued focus on risk. A further 16 percent said they had an alternative view.
In her closing remarks, another panelist said of cyber crime: “Your job is never finished in security, but you can be prepared.” She advised to “put plans in place that you’ve exercised and you’ll be ready for it”.
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