U.S. government officials held a meeting on Oct. 21 with financial services executives, financial regulators and administration officials to discuss cybersecurity and the financial stability implications of a cyber incident.
Meeting participants noted the importance of coordinating responses to a cyber incident, maintaining resilience in the sector’s core functionality, and ensuring the trust and confidence in individual firms and the sector as a whole during operational stress.
Financial regulators participating in the meeting included Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Mary Jo White, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Chairman Martin Gruenberg, and Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Tim Massad.
Among the financial sector participants were: James Aramanda, president and CEO of The Clearing House; Michael Bodson, president and CEO of the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation; Phupinder Gill, CEO of CME Group; and Jeffrey Sprecher, chairman and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange.
Regulators have already taken steps to develop cyber safety standards. In September, the CFTC unanimously approved two final cybersecurity rules setting out the frequency and types of system safeguards testing that exchanges, clearinghouses, swap execution facilities and swap data repositories should conduct.
Under the CFTC rules clearinghouses, exchanges, SEFs and SDRs are required to conduct the following types of cybersecurity testing: vulnerability testing, penetration testing, controls testing, security incident response plant testing and enterprise technology risk assessments.
On Oct. 25, the Treasury Department's Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued an advisory to financial institutions on cyber-events and cyber-enabled crime. The advisory stated that financial institutions could play an important role in protecting the U.S. financial system from these threats.
