Bank of England set to kick off cyber ‘stress test’ of UK’s financial system within days

THE Bank of England is set to kick off a cyber “stress test” of the UK’s financial system within days.

It comes after the Government blamed Chinese hackers for two malicious attacks on the UK electoral register.

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A Bank survey found that 80 per cent of firms consider a cyber attack the second biggest threat to the UK financial system, just below geo­political risk.

 The Bank of Englandsaid that some firms draw a connection between the two.

A stress test works by running a series of scenarios to check whether a firm has protection to withstand such a shock.

 After the 2008 financial crisis, stress tests were developed to test whether banks had enough financial buffers to withstand a drastic worsening in the economy and have been credited with keeping them resilient.

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In this case, the Bank’s cyber stress test will check how quickly a bank can recover from a malicious hack, and also check the potential ripple effect — known as contagion — on the financial system.

It could also include the vulnerabilities of banks’ increasing use of cloud computing provided by Google and Microsoft, and the threat to UK financial stability if they were disrupted.

A major attack on a European financial services payments system could lead to losses of £762billion, according to Lloyds of London, the insurance marketplace.

Elisabeth Stheeman, who sits on the Bank’s financial policy committee, said in a report last year that the UK’s financial infrastructure “was largely invisible to us until it no longer works.”

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The impact of a cyber attack has become even more of a concern due to rapidly advancing artificial intelligence technology and our reliance on digital banking.

Green vow on fashion

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BOOHOO, which has recently signed Love Island star Molly Smith, above, as a brand ambassador for 2024, has joined Asos and Asda in promising not to mislead shoppers about how environmentally friendly their clothes are after a 20-month crackdown on “greenwashing”.

The competition regulator kicked off an investigation into fast fashion amid concerns that some label’s eco claims did not “stack up”. Asos has a “Responsible edit”, Boohoo sells clothes under “Ready for the Future” and Asda has “George for good”.

Firms must stop using vague terms like “responsible” and “sustainable”, and can only call fashion “recycled” if the majority of fabric is recycled, the percentage of which must be easily displayed.

Morrisons sales at 3-year high

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THE new boss of Morrisons has declared a “sense of optimism and renewal” as the supermarket had its best sales performance for three years.

Customers had abandoned Morrisons for cheaper rivals, meaning it suffered a steady slump in sales after its private equity takeover in 2021 and an unwinding of a grocery sales boom during the pandemic.

But yesterday the supermarket — which serves one million shoppers a week — said like-for-like sales had risen by 4.6 per cent in the 13 weeks to the end of January.

Boss Rami Baitieh said Morrisons was heading for its “next chapter”. His turnaround plans include daily meetings with senior staff at 6.30pm to discuss customer complaints.

The supermarket received over 200,000 complaints a week last year, but that has dropped to 90,000. Mr Baitieh called complaints “the canaries in the retail coalmine”.

Bad luck at lotto

THE new owner of the National Lottery, Allwyn, has reported a slip in sales in the last year of Camelot’s ownership.

Allwyn said sales in the UK had slipped 4 per cent to £3.3billion, and underlying earnings edged 5 per cent lower to £155.5million.

Allwyn said the drop was because of a lower number of rollover Euromillion jackpots above €100million, which meant fewer punters were buying tickets.

£12M gold loot

GOLD miner Endeavour Mining yesterday revealed its former chief executive had secretly transferred out millions more from its accounts than it previously thought.

 Sebastian de Montessus was fired in January after Endeavour discovered £4.6million had been diverted from the firm to a mystery offshore account.

But yesterday they said a probe had found two more transfers totalling £12million.

Mr de Montessus said he “didn’t benefit” from the sums. Endeavour is now clawing back £22million from his pay.

SHARES in box business DS Smith rose 10 per cent yesterday after US packaging giant International Paper gatecrashed an agreed £6.2billion deal with rival Mondi. The US firm has tabled an all-share offer worth £6.8billion.

Trader's defeat

A CITY trader jailed for “rigging” key interest rates has had his attempt to overturn his conviction thrown out by the court of appeal.

Tom Hayes, 44, was convicted in 2015 for manipulating the interest rate benchmark “libor”, which prices billions of pounds of debt, including mortgages.

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 A court was shown evidence that Hayes could ask for the libor rate to be changed in exchange for a curry or Mars bar. A Court of Appeal judge said Hayes “knew what he was doing”.