Bank of England to test security with simulation cyber attack
The Bank of England is planning to carry out an operation this week that will subject "dummy" banks to a simulated cyber computer attack to test their resilience in the face of a real event.
"Operation Resilient Shield" will be used to test all of the capital's large global institutions, with the results evaluated by the US Federal Reserve.
Banks in America will also be tested, with the entire operation co-ordinated by the Computer Emergency Response Team.
The findings will form the basis of a contingency plan to protect the economy, sources told the Sunday Times.
The test will answer questions over what parts of the system would be able to continue and what would have to be forced to shut down if the financial system was under serious threat.
When the operation was first announced back in January during the Prime Minister's visit to President Barack Obama, the White House said: "Both leaders agreed to bolster efforts to enhance the cyber security of critical infrastructure in both countries, strengthen threat information sharing and intelligence co-operation on cyber issues, and support new educational exchanges between US and British cyber security scholars and researchers."
Around 90% of large companies reported in a UK government survey that they had had a serious breach of IT security last year.