US Banks ‘Deeply Concerned’ About Cybersecurity Risk Following Attack on Top Financial Regulator

Trade associations representing banks and financial firms are worried about the cybersecurity risk management practices at federal regulatory agencies.

Officials at the American Bankers Association, the Bank Policy Institute, the Managed Funds Association and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association recently penned a letter to US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent outlining their concerns, specifically highlighting the recently disclosed cybersecurity breach of Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s (OCC) email system.

“To address similar challenges across all financial regulatory agencies, we encourage the Administration to implement the following recommendations:

(1) ensure agencies are held to the same or substantively similar security and data protection standards expected of financial institutions to include transparency and accountability for upholding these standards;

(2) enable firms to retain and house their own sensitive data needed for regulatory engagement;

(3) improve regulatory agencies’ incident response processes to include notification and communication with regulated institutions; and

(4) consolidate and streamline examinations conducted by the financial regulatory agencies to reduce the amount of data being shared.”

The trade associations note that “nation-state cyber adversaries” are increasingly targeting federal agencies, including financial regulators.

In regard to the OCC, hackers accessed nearly 150,000 emails after first compromising the regulator’s system back in May 2023, Bloomberg reports.

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