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MPs have condemned the level of IT failures at banks, warning that financial levies on firms and more regulation may be needed.
A Treasury Committee report said the frequency of online banking crashes and customer disruption was "unacceptable". The report, published on Monday, said with bank branches and cash machines closing, there was greater urgency to ensure online banking worked. Customers are being left "cashless and cut off", the report said. Firms could do much more to ensure their IT systems were resilient and to resolve complaints and compensation more quickly.
The MPs suggest the three major regulators - Financial Conduct Authority, Prudential Regulation Authority, Bank of England - do not have the staff and experience to deal with the growing number of computer failures. An increase in the financial levies on banks may be needed to ensure that the regulators are adequately funded and resourced , the report says.
MPs are also worried about the increase use of third-party providers of cloud services for computing power and data storage. "The consequences of a major operational incident at a large cloud service provider, such as Microsoft, Google or Amazon, could be significant," the report said. "There is, therefore, a considerable case for the regulation of these cloud service providers to ensure high standards of operational resilience." Cloud services "stood out as such a source of systemic risk" for the financial system, the MPs said.
(Score: 4, Informative) by looorg on Tuesday October 29 2019, @02:56PM (8 children)
The problem isn't UK specific tho, it seems to be global. Banking websites crashes regularly, transactions won't process on credit/bankcards, SWISH (1) (mobile banking transfer system) goes down about once a month or so, various internet ID system crashes. So the "internet banking" thing is quite hit and miss in that regard, then in combo with that the banks are closing down their actual offices or institute various policies of banking just makes it worse -- my bank currently only allow cash transactions or handling between 10-12am monday-thursday; if you want to handle cash beyond those limits you have to interact with a machine (they have ATM:s that you can deposit and withdraw money from).
So the IT infrastructure just isn't stable enough, or well considering the amount of transactions they handle they are probably fairly good. It's just that when they go down it then also have a massive effect on their customers or population as they have become so dependent on it and now it just doesn't work as advertised. This is the outcome of the "cashless society" that they all dream about ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swish_%28payment%29 [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @03:25PM (5 children)
Bitcoin doesn't crash.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @04:04PM (1 child)
It just swings wildly. Very sound currency.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Tuesday October 29 2019, @04:28PM
One could argue that Bitcoin is the datum, and all other currencies swing wildly.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Tuesday October 29 2019, @04:14PM (2 children)
Until the hardware where you kept your wallet on dies or you have some kind of stroke and forget your password. Sure it's still there in some sense but you can't access it. Sort of like when the bank- or transaction- system(s) crashes, it's not like your monies are gone, you just can't access them at this particular moment in time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 29 2019, @04:32PM (1 child)
Use a paper wallet or a trezor with the seed backed up in a safe for your savings.
You wouldn't go to the bar with your life savings in your pocket would you?
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday October 30 2019, @05:00AM
So now you need two phones, one with the banking app, and keep it secure, and other to go around with a reduced bank app ("cash for the cashless world"), for example to the bar?
Remembering how good software and hardware is, next step will be one phone per bank or any important service. Otherwise a compromise in one of those apps (or 3rd party one, or OS or hardware) could leave you in a really bad position when all them go rogue.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by PiMuNu on Tuesday October 29 2019, @03:44PM
The feedback loop is quite interesting as well. "systemic risk" means that multiple financial institutions, relying on the same computing service provider, could all go down at the same time. The financial system seems a bit stable to one institution failing, but systemic issues affecting many institutes can cause lasting and significant damage.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Tuesday October 29 2019, @11:34PM
That these systems are the very juiciest targets should tell you everything about what they are up against. Robbing a bank has never been easier.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..