What CBEST means for the industry and its customers

What CBEST means for the industry and its customers: Following a summit held on Tuesday, hosted by the British Banker’s Association, the Bank of England announced a new framework to spot and test possible weak points at lenders in order to combat the growing problem of cyber hacking. By appointing cyber security as the main industry issue to discuss, the BBA brought cyber security issues to the forefront of the economy and out of the recesses of IT departments.CBEST, the new framework, will use information from government and vetted commercial sources to identify potential attackers, the Bank said in a statement.

The framework then replicates the techniques used by hackers to devise a test to see how successful an attack on a company might be and whether it is resilient enough to resist it. Some might argue that this is ‘closing the stable door, after the horse has bolted’, and there should be more done to look at innovative ways to carry out an attack, but – it’s good to start with the known vectors and have them covered, before moving onto more creative routes.

This is not just a specialist issue, it’s essential for our economy that banks reinforce their cyber security measures. A company is valued on its ability to handle all manner of risks, and that includes cyber risks – a message that was reinforced at the summit earlier this week by Andrew Wingfield, a financial services lawyer at King & Wood Mallesons SJ Berwin: “The UK’s ability to deal with such attacks will determine how it is viewed globally in terms of investment and its position as a worldwide leader in financial services”.