Barclays passes government’s ‘internet-born threat’ test

Barclays Bank has been awarded the government’s cyber security certificate for digital banking services after independent tests of services such as Pingit.

Barclays is the first major company to gain the status, which is part of the government’s Cyber Essentials Schemetest of whether organisations are protected against “internet-born threats”.

According to the Cyber Essentials Scheme: “Large organisations would already be expected to have some knowledge or experience of cyber security. However, like smaller companies, many still have limited capability to implement the full range of controls necessary to achieve robust cyber protection.”

Philip Sowter, director of  mobile banking at Barclays, said: “We identified this new government scheme as an important part of our plans to help customers in the digital age transact completely safely and securely.”

Separately the UK finance industry has launched a cyber security framework for sharing detailed threat intelligence, testing cyber security and benchmarking financial service providers.

The scheme’s framework was developed by the non-profit Council for Registered Ethical Security Testers (Crest) and cyber intelligence company Digital Shadows. The Bank of England, FCA and CESG also contributed.

Barclays has invested heavily in digital services and strives to be seen as a digital leader. It recently appointed Michael Harte as the replacement for recently departed global chief operations and technology officer Shaygan Kheradpir.

Harte, seen as a leader in digital banking, joined from Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA), where he had been responsible for operations and technology since 2006. At CBA he put the online bank into the Amazon Web Services cloud.