LONDON – Dozens of London-based banks joined other financial institutions in the capital on Tuesday for a giant exercise to test their defenses against a cyber-attack, officials said.
Government officials, regulators and the Bank of England oversaw the exercise, dubbed “Waking Shark II”.
Details of the exercise were kept secret, but sources said it tested how banks coped with a sustained attack, focusing in particular on investment banking systems.
Credit Suisse is believed to have designed a scenario that mimics a real-time threat, with firms hit by a wave of announcements and attacks on computer systems.
The Bank of England recently warned of “potential vulnerabilities” in the banking system and urged financial institutions to increase their protection against cyber-attack.
The British banking sector is considered at risk owing to outdated IT systems as well as its reliance on a centralised infrastructure for payment systems.
The last cyber-threat exercise is believed to have taken place in 2011.

More from AFP
- Dutch, European Hospitals ‘Hit by Pro-Russian Hackers’
- Cyberattacks Target Websites of German Airports, Admin
- Meta Slapped With 5.5 Million Euro Fine for EU Data Breach
- International Arrests Over ‘Criminal’ Crypto Exchange
- France Regulator Raps Apple Over App Store Ads
- More Political Storms for TikTok After US Government Ban
- Meta Hit With 390 Million Euro Fine Over EU Data Breaches
- Facebook Agrees to Pay $725 Million to Settle Privacy Suit
Latest News
- Google Shells Out $600,000 for OSS-Fuzz Project Integrations
- F5 BIG-IP Vulnerability Can Lead to DoS, Code Execution
- Flaw in Cisco Industrial Appliances Allows Malicious Code to Persist Across Reboots
- UK Car Retailer Arnold Clark Hit by Ransomware
- Dealing With the Carcinization of Security
- HeadCrab Botnet Ensnares 1,200 Redis Servers for Cryptomining
- Cyber Insights 2023 | Supply Chain Security
- Cyber Insights 2023 | Regulations
