The global financial system has come under attack. Not from hackers but through a coordinated simulation of a massive cyberattack conducted by ten countries. The objective is to increase cooperation to avoid a negative impact on markets and banks if such an attack would ever occur.
Testing The Global Financial System
It is evident there is a strong link between the digital financial system and what people experience in the real world. If something goes wrong digitally, it can cripple the global economy rather quickly. Therefore, conducting regular tests on the global financial system is of the utmost importance. These “war games” often yield valuable insights, which may or may not be acted upon.
The group simulated a cyber attack against the global financial system in this simulation version. The attack evolves over ten days, including having sensitive data show up on the darknet. Additionally, there were fake news reports to cause global market chaos and even triggered a bank run. But, of course, such scenarios are not impossible in the real world either, certainly not with inflation rates going up.
Moreover, the overall simulation featured various attacks that impacted global forex and bond markets, disrupted data integrity, and broke up transactions between importers and exporters. A viable test, as such scenarios would wreak havoc on the global financial system. Global cooperation is necessary to reduce any damage done by such coordinated attacks, should they ever occur.
Several solutions were discussed to thwart the impact on the global financial system. Options include a coordinated bank holiday, coordinated delinking from significant currencies, etc. Mainly that latter aspect would be intriguing to behold, although it may prove somewhat tricky to execute in a live environment. Achieving consensus on that front will be very difficult.
Interestingly, this simulation should have occurred at the Dubai World Expo. However, the Omnicron variant of COVID-19 made that impossible. Instead, the simulation took place in Jerusalem, and officials joined via video conference.