Like most investors, Norway’s giant sovereign wealth fund, which owns the equivalent of 1.5 per cent of every listed company in the world, has a lot to worry about in an era of gyrating market valuations, surging cost pressures across many industries and heightened geopolitical uncertainty over Ukraine and Taiwan. But what tops its worry list? The 100,00 cyber attacks the fund faces every year, Nicolai Tangen, chief executive of Norges Bank Investment Management, told the Financial Times.
If, as Willie Sutton reputedly said, bank robbers rob banks “because that is where the money is”, then it is little surprise that modern-day criminals are resorting to cyber attacks on financial institutions, such as NBIM, as well as market infrastructure more generally. The number of known malware attacks rose 11 per cent in the first half of the year to 2.8bn, according to the 2022 SonicWall Cyber Threat Report, with the financial sector being particularly actively targeted.
Some cyber experts had feared an even greater cyber onslaught from Russia following its invasion of Ukraine and the imposition of retaliatory sanctions by many western countries — and that may yet…
