The World Economic Forum (WEF) has created a consortium to cover cybersecurity for financial technology companies (fintechs) and data aggregators. The founding members include the bank Citigroup, insurance company Zurich Insurance Group, fintech firm Kabbage, information technology company Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), and financial infrastructure provider The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). Its aim; to create a framework for the assessment of cybersecurity in financial technology.
Michael C Bodson, President and Chief Executive Officer of DTCC, USA, and a founding member of the consortium, said: “Cyber-risk is the number-one threat to the financial services industry and its infrastructure, so it is critically important that we work together to share insights and drive best practice. This initiative will further strengthen cyber-resilience and foster greater collaboration with our colleagues across the public and private sectors globally.”
And Matthew Blake, Head of the Financial and Monetary System Initiative at the WEF, said: “Fintechs can only deliver on their customer experience promises if the financial system is able to manage the risks adequately. This consortium will offer technology companies a clear goalpost and thus enable them to implement sound cybersecurity measures at the product design stage.”
The Forum said that the consortium will commence work in close consultation with the WEF’s new Global Centre for Cybersecurity in Geneva. For background, view a white paper by the WEF with Oliver Wyman Group (MMC) on the WEF website. It makes the point that as businesses rely more on technology and amass larger stores of data, protecting customer information has become increasingly important to maintaining a secure and trusted financial services system. Technology – from digitisation and application programming interfaces (APIs) to robotics and biometrics – are expanding the amount of customer data at risk as well as enabling more sophisticated cyber-attacks. Hence the need for guidance and assessment mechanisms, including common principles.
