Cyber risk governance should take centre stage in financial services

It feels as though cyber risk has crept up on us without warning and with great intensity. We have come a long way from the days when our palm pilots had to be hot-sync’d through a docking station and the occasional hazard was from viruses transmitted as email attachments. Over the years, we have embraced extreme connectivity combined with extreme automation in a never-ending drive towards convenience and costefficiency. However, even as banks continue to nudge, cajole (and perhaps occasionally threaten) their customers towards impersonal e-channels, we learn about record amounts of losses from online fraud and theft. Furthermore, all of us – not just the specialists – are asked to act as conscription soldiers in the fight against this threat. According to a report by Accenture, almost eight out of ten business leaders believe that they are adopting new technologies faster than they can address related security issues. It also estimates that nearly $350 billion of value could be lost by the banking sector to cybercrime in the next five years.