The Bank for International Settlements summarises helpful advice for financial institutions facing cyber and resilience challenges.
Soon we expect the focus will shift to engaging banks to help support the recovery of the sector and of the real economy, which in our view will place even bigger stresses on banks.
Guidance issued by financial sector authorities in response to the Covid-19 crisis seems to suggest that international efforts to come up with operational resilience standards should take into account at least the following elements:
critical/essential employees: identifying the critical functions and employees that support important business services, as well as ensuring employees' safety and that they can safely resume their duties (remotely, if necessary).
IT infrastructure: ensuring that IT infrastructure can support a sharp increase in usage over an extended period and taking steps to safeguard information security.
third-party service providers: ensuring that external service providers and/or critical suppliers are taking adequate measures and are sufficiently prepared for a scenario in which there will be heavy reliance on their services.
cyber resilience: remaining vigilant in order to identify and protect vulnerable systems, and detect, respond and recover from cyber attacks.