Sound The Trumpet : World Must Prepare for 'Armageddon' - Style Cyber Attack, Warns U.S. Regulator

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“World Must Prepare for 'Armageddon' - Style Cyber Attack, Warns U.S. Regulator”
by The Telegraph
September 23rd, 2014

Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services, says it is a "matter of time" before there is a systemic attack on the global financial system.

Ben Lawsky, the head of New York's Department of Financial Services. Photo: BLOOMBERG

The world must prepare for an “Armageddon”-style cyber attack, one of America’s most influential regulators has warned.

Benjamin Lawsky, superintendent of the New York State Department of Financial Services, said it was a “matter of time” before there is a major cyber attack on the global financial system, and that the public needs to invest heavily in preventing disaster now, or pay an even higher price later on.

"They [cyber attackers] are breaking into everything. It is only a matter of time before something happens that is more systematic and problematic,” he said.

“I worry that we are going to have some sort of major cyber-event in the financial system that’s going to cause us all to shudder”.

Mr Lawsky drew comparisons with the 9/11 terrorist attack on New York’s World Trade Centre, which killed thousands of people and crippled financial confidence around the world.

"The failure to detect the 9/11 plot was a failure of imagination,” he said. “I worry about the same thing here, is that something will probably happen and we will look back as it and say, 'how did we not do more'.

Speaking at a Bloomberg conference in New York, Mr Lawsky also spoke about the importance of holding individuals to account for financial crime.

"Just damning the entire firm is counter productive. You make it look like the whole firm is to blame, and often the fine is picked up by shareholders. If you are not holding individuals to account, you are not getting the full effect of deterence. You may be getting your pound of flesh but you are not improving the system."

His comments are likely to raise hackles in some quarters. Earlier this year, the New York State Department of Financial Services levied a record $8.9bn fine against the French bank, BNP Paribas, for doing business with countries that are blacklisted by the US. The regulator has also fined Standard Chartered, twice, for poor controls on money laundering.

However, Mr Lawsky argued on Monday that it should do more to crack down on individual wrongdoers. "Individuals make decisions, often based on consequences for them, for their family, for their future,” he said.

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