British financial firms have been warned to bolster their defences in the face of rocketing cyberattacks after employees began working from home.
The UK Financial Stability Board (FSB), which coordinates financial rules for the G20 group of nations, said remote working has opened up new possibilities for cyberattacks.
With working fom home expected to stay in some form across the financial services industry for some time the FSB said most cyber frameworks did not envisage a scenario of near-universal remote working and the exploitation of such a situation by cyber threat actors.
The FSB report to the G20 is a first take on lessons learned from the pandemic’s impact on financial stability.
Cyber activities such as phishing, malware and ransomware grew from fewer than 5,000 per week in February 2020 to more than 200,000 per week in late April 2021, the FSB said.
