Speech by Sabine Lautenschläger, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB and Vice-Chair of the Supervisory Board of the ECB, at the first meeting of the Euro Cyber Resilience Board for pan-European Financial Infrastructures, Frankfurt am Main, 9 March 2018
In 1903, the Italian inventor Marconi demonstrated his new invention, a wireless telegraph, to a large audience. It didn’t go too well for him, though. The machine itself did work in the sense that it transmitted a message. However, it was not the message the audience – or Marconi – had expected. The word “rats” was being sent again and again. The system had been hacked. The culprit in this case was Nevil Maskelyne, a magician. Allegedly, he had been hired by a British wired-telegraph company which was worried that Marconi’s invention might ruin its business.
Technology has advanced a lot since 1903. And it has created a deeply interconnected world. The financial system is a case in point. No financial institution can survive, let alone thrive, on its own. No bank can do without the complex web of financial market infrastructures that underpins its day-to-day business. No bank, therefore, must underestimate the…
