Britain’s financial firms must work in collaboration with law enforcement and government agencies in order to tackle the threat of cyber crime, according to UK Finance and KPMG.

A new report argued that the threat of cyber crime cannot be mitigated just by spending more money, but rather by increased collaboration to render cyber criminals’ markets, tools and systems ineffective.

David Ferbrache, technical director and head of cyber and space at KPMG, explained that this approach imposes cost on the criminals, because they then have to reconstruct their techniques, like botnets and phishing sites.

The global impact of cyber crime exceeds $450 billion a year, according to the report, and is now second only to political risk in terms of challenges facing the financial sector.

While UK banks alone spent $360 million on IT in 2016, approaches are often slow and constrained by regulation relative to the methods used by cyber criminals, who can operate beyond borders and the law and are constantly updating their methods.

Stephen Jones, chief executive at UK Finance, reiterated that the finance industry must revise its approach to cyber security.

“Strategic collaboration is needed through close integration with external agencies including the National Cyber Security Centre, National Crime Agency and police forces, to build a robust intelligence sharing model, in order to be more effective about tackling the ever-increasing cyber crime threat,” he commented.

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