The Bank of England restructured its security department and lost multiple senior employees in charge of protecting some of Britain’s most critical financial infrastructure shortly before it suffered a major breach, the Observer can reveal.
After the central bank admitted that hedge funds had gained early access to its market-moving press conferences via a backup audio feed, multiple former employees contacted the Observer to warn that the Bank was struggling with the departure of key staff responsible for protecting it against external threats.
The sources said at least 20 of the Bank’s staff tasked with information security had left or been reassigned elsewhere within the bank within the past year, raising questions over the protection of the nation’s payment systems and other critical infrastructure vital for the British financial system. The Observer was able to verify 13 of these departures using information from social media and other sources.
The revelations come at a sensitive time for the Bank as it prepares for the handover of power in March from Mark Carney, the outgoing governor, to Andrew Bailey, the current chief executive of the Financial Conduct Authority.
Threadneedle Street has also played a central role in efforts to improve the safety and integrity of the financial system since the 2008 banking collapse, including warning the industry to improve its cyber and information security operations. It is responsible for key parts of the nation’s critical infrastructure, including the payments systems that carry every bank transfer made in Britain, the wages of millions of people, cheques, and payments between businesses of all sizes. On an average day in 2018, the Bank’s real-time gross settlement system (RTGS) settled transactions worth £651bn.
According to the former employees, the Bank’s chief information security officer and t ..
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