"Leon Panetta, the US defense secretary, has suggested that a cyberattack on financial markets, the power grid, and government systems could be "the next Pearl Harbor." Officials' anxiety has grown amid circumstantial evidence that malefactors helped to exacerbate the market turmoil in late 2008."In response, regulators have been tightening the rules. Just how much danger the US financial system is in from deliberate attack is hard to judge from the outside. What is clear is that politicians, regulators, and the industry have struggled to forge a coherent response.
"The Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council (FSSCC), an industry group that works under the auspices of the US treasury, has developed a "threat matrix" in consultation with a group of financial regulators with an equally snappy name, the Financial and Banking Information Infrastructure Committee.
"But information is not always shared promptly. Banks were miffed that regulators did not tell them about a big attack on NASDAQ in 2010 until more than three months later. Within government, responsibility is fragmented." Read more in the Economist.
