This is well highlighted by the risk presented by cyber-attack. Last year saw the ‘Bangladesh Bank’ incident in which $ million of fraudulent payments were effected through the SWIFT network. This has brought to the forefront the need to manage cyber risk not only in the infrastructure firm itself, but also in its surrounding ecosystem of users and intermediaries. This was an attack on a user rather than on the SWIFT network itself. SWIFT has responded with a customer security programme to reinforce customers cyber defences around their connection to SWIFT and is developing plans for enforcement of the framework. The Bank of Bangladesh attack had a criminal motivation. It did not bring the system to a halt and, in a narrow sense, one could argue that financial stability was unaffected. I think, however, that would be a complacent view for two reasons. First, the attack risks undermining the credibility of a key piece of global financial infrastructure. And second, and perhaps more important, the attack highlighted the growing risk from cyber attacks generally, whatever the motivation. 14  PMI-IOSCO: Principles for financial market infrastructure (2012). Principle 17: Operational risk. 8  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  8  The general need for regulators and other authorities responsible for financial stability to give a high priority to operational risk and within that cyber risks has been well recognised. This will not be a one-off effort. Cyber defences will need to evolve, continuously, to meet the ever growing sophistication of threats.

  10  Visa Europe, based in the UK and a subsidiary of Visa Inc, executed all 18.9 billion Visa transactions in Europe in 2015. These peaked at 2,000 transactions per second in the pre-Christmas period. 11  And third, although each of the pipes is distinct and serves a discrete purpose, they operate together to provide a seamless global network of functions that Michael Godfrey could not have imagined. The operations behind a routine financial transaction – issuing corporate debt, adjusting a pension fund portfolio or hedging against the risks of commodity price increases – will typically involve a wide range of financial market infrastructure firms over many jurisdictions (see diagram A). 8  https://www.cmegroup.com/company/files/cme-group-overview.pdf http://www.eurexclearing.com/clearing-en/about-us 10 http://www.swapclear.com/what/clearing-volumes.html 11 https://www.visaeurope.com/enabling-payments/processing 9  5  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  5  Diagram 1: Example of an international commodity hedge  Diagram 2: Example of equity issuance  6  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  6  These global pipes have proved pretty robust. In the last crisis financial market infrastructure proved resilient, including during the most testing time of Lehman’s collapse. But their use is growing, in part because they increase efficiency and lower cost – and in part because they reduce risk and authorities have mandated market participants to use them. 12  In line with this, post crisis, authorities internationally agreed that there needed to be a corresponding increase in the regulatory expectations of FMIs.