Financial services firms need to improve their defences against cyberattacks as homeworking is set to continue long term, according to a statement by the Financial Stability Board (FSB).

The FSB was founded in 2009, after the 2008 financial crisis, and provides guidance on regulation to the G20 nations and central banks.

The FSB said that instances of phishing, malware and ransomware grew from 5,000 per week in February 2020 to more than 200,000 per week in late April 2021.

However, the FSB said that the financial system coped well with the challenges posed by the pandemic in general.

The FSB is due to publish the full report in October.

Many UK financial institutions are embracing homeworking; the NatWest Group is reportedly preparing for only 13 per cent of staff to work full-time across its offices. LINK

Financial services remain a popular target for cyber criminals worldwide. Fiducia & GAD IT, a German company that provides IT services to many of the nation’s co-operative banks was hit by a debilitating distributed denial of service attack (DDoS) in June.

"Financial institutions have generally been resilient but they may need to consider adjustments to cyber risk management processes, cyber incident reporting, response and recovery activities, as well as management of critical third-party service providers, for example cloud services," said than FSB spokesperson.

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