Canada Needs Stronger Cyber Security Regulations: Bank Of Canada Official

OTTAWA — Canada should consider strengthening regulations to safeguard the country’s financial system against potential cyberattacks, a top Bank of Canada official said on Tuesday.

The comments come ahead of the release next week of the central bank’s biannual survey of financial sector risk management experts, which is expected to cite cyber security as a concern. Last spring’s survey identified cyber security incidents as the greatest risk to the Canadian financial system.

“We need to increase our focus on the resilience of the financial sector,” Filipe Dinis, the Bank of Canada’s chief operating officer, told a Toronto business audience in a speech.

“That means we should consider updating the balance of the current regulations and think about the necessary trade-offs to do so,” he said.

Cyber security has long been a preoccupation for Canada’s central bank. In a 2017 interview with The Canadian Press, Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz said the threat of a cyberattack was in many ways “more worrisome than anything else.”

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