The boss of HSBC UK, Ian Stuart has admitted to having sleepless nights over the ever increasing threat that a cyberattack could affect his group.
Big budgets are being put aside to address cybersecurity, which is “top of the agenda” to prevent HSBC caving to cybercrime.
Peers such as Lloyds Group have been affected recently as well as a trail of retailers including Harrods, M&S and The Co-Op.
Stuart suggested the strengths of the attackers were evolving at such a rate that targeted attacks could hit them “all the time”.
“It does worry me – we can be attacked and we are being attacked all the time”
In February, a high-profile attack on a cohort of banks including HSBC, Lloyds, TSB and Nationwide caused widespread IT outages for 1.2 million customers. The latest attacks on M&S is said to drag on until July and cost the company £300 million.
Stuart also spoke about the pressure on all banks to make multi-million dollar investments in their IT systems.
Mr Stuarts and other banking bosses have given evidence to the Commons Treasury Committee detailing the vulnerabilities they face to cyberattacks. They were pushed to spend hundreds of millions of pounds to improve their IT systems.
