Andy Barratt – UK managing director at cybersecurity consultancy, Coalfire
When it comes to cyber failures, it’s the big names that make the news. It seems that almost every other day we hear about the latest multi-national bank or business falling foul of yet another attack.
In the past few months, IT malfunctions and cyber-attacks have led to widescale disruption that has caused household-name brands to axe their senior leaders, share prices to plummet and panicked customers to re-secure their online accounts.
The IT saga that surrounded TSB this summer was a perfect example of a big business causing itself unnecessary disruption through poor risk management. Customers were left unable to access any of their online accounts for weeks after TSB attempted to migrate client details from an existing IT platform to that of new owners, Sabadell. Later, when IBM was called in to restore order, it quickly became clear that TSB had not tested the process adequately enough beforehand, failing to ensure the smooth transfer of data from one platform to another.
In the weeks that followed, the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) accused the bank’s leadership of ‘portraying…
