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Interconnectivities and regulatory impact [46]

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Bullet points include: “But cyber presents new challenges. It is not a game against nature. Unlike other causes of operational disruption like fires and floods, we know there are agents out there – criminals, terrorist organisations or state sponsored actors – that have the will, if not necessarily the means, to attack the system. Motivations vary. More often than not they are economic – to defraud banks or their customers or to extract information. But we have seen cases where the motivation is to damage the system, either to destroy data or cause non-availability of systems or both. The capabilities of these actors, and thus the nature of the threat, are rapidly evolving – barriers to entry are low in cyber space and attacks are readily scalable. Low level attacks are now not isolated events but continuous. Unlike physical attacks that are localised, these attacks are international and know no boundaries. Cyber defence as a result has become not a matter of designing a hard perimeter that can repel attacks but detecting where networks have been penetrated and responding effectively where this occurs. As it changes and multiplies cyber is elusive, hard to define and to measure. But it is clear that the risk is on the rise and a growing cause of concern to industry and authorities alike. In 2013 the Bank of England’s Systemic Risk survey reported a 10% increase in concerns regarding operational risk (the highest level it has been since the survey began). The risk was cited by 24% of respondents. The threat of ‘cyber’ attacks was the most commonly mentioned specific risk in this category.”

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