Banks Face Hidden Risks In Cloud Supply Chains

A Finextra webinar hosted in association with Escode will examine how financial institutions can build resilience into their technology systems. The discussion will cover cloud services, software, artificial intelligence and quantum computing.

The panel will examine risks linked to banks’ reliance on external technology providers and complex software supply chains. A failure at a supplier used by several institutions could interrupt services even when a bank’s own systems continue to operate.

The session will compare regulatory approaches in different jurisdictions. Some rules require institutions to protect their digital supply chains. Other regulators issue guidance directly to technology providers. Some jurisdictions do not address concentration risk, leaving institutions to assess the impact of sharing suppliers with competitors.

Speakers will discuss stressed exit strategies, which set out how an institution could replace or disconnect from a supplier during a disruption. The panel will also examine software escrow arrangements, which can give organisations access to software, data or technical information if a provider fails or becomes unavailable.

Other topics will include identifying supplier dependencies that standard risk reviews may miss, testing contingency plans and updating controls as technology and supplier networks change. The discussion will address the effect of increased artificial intelligence use on resilience planning and the longer-term risks linked to quantum computing.

Wayne Scott, governance, risk and compliance solution lead at Escode; Chris Knox, global director at Microsoft; and Angela Candlin-Evans, head of business continuity and resilience at ClearBank, will join the panel. Jane Cooper, a Finextra contributor, will moderate the discussion.