Cyber Risk Supervision – Path to Operational Resilience

The course on ‘Cyber Risk Supervision – Path to Operational Resilience’ was delivered in Vienna during the period March 6 – 10, 2023. The course was attended by 28 participants (including 10 women participants) from 13 countries, representing central banks, supervisory agencies, and ministries of finance. 

The course assumes relevance in the context of increasing digitalization, newer technologies being adopted by the financial sector, growing interconnections, increasing frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks targeting the financial sector and the geopolitical conflicts. The course began with participants articulating their expectations from the course. Providing an introductory to intermediate level of training on cyber risk regulation and supervision to non-specialist financial sector supervisors, the course covered: cyber risk and financial sector; financial stability implications; overarching framework; introduction to banking and cloud technologies; threat landscape; risk management concepts; third party risk; business continuity; cyber regulations; and cyber supervisory practices.

The course had a mix of lectures, and group work / case studies / role play activity and country presentations. Role play as a pedagogy was attempted during the latest offering of the course and was very well received. Country presentations provided an opportunity to share the best practices among the participants. The group work was focused on reinforcing the learning from the lectures and required participants to delve deep on selected topics. Case studies reflecting real life cyberattacks on the financial sector entities made the participants apply their learnings in solving the cases. 

The participation level was high and there were many questions on the topic indicating higher level of awareness among the participants. The feedback received indicate that the participants learned best practices in regulating and supervising cyber risk and that would translate into better regulation and supervision going forward. 

Rangachary Ravikumar, Senior Financial Sector Expert, IMF