In central clearing, in settlement, in payments if we wish to maintain the infrastructure to sustain an open and integrated global capital market, we will need to build upon the arrangements we have developed for supervisory cooperation and co-ordination. These are not insignificant challenges. But the history of the development of this infrastructure is one of both private and public sector co-operation to provide international plumbing that is both efficient and safe. Conclusion  And these challenges may be older than we think. th  Less than a mile from here stands the Temple church, built by the Knights Templar in the 12 century. Originally established to protect pilgrims en route to Jerusalem, the Knights Templar soon developed complex international financial operations to store assets and move money across borders. 16  All speeches are available online at www.bankofengland.co.uk/speeches  16  In London, pilgrims depositing assets in the Temple church received a note that could be redeemed for money when they arrived in the Holy City. The Templar’s wealth and infrastructure grew enormously – aided by the fact that the Pope exempted them from all regulation, supervision and taxes. One historian has categorised them as the first multinational corporation. In the end, however, they grew too powerful and the ‘authorities’ of the day in Rome, Paris and London withdrew their ‘authorisation’ and disbanded the order. Today’s infrastructure, developed to support financial globalisation, exceeds by far anything the Templars – or the first Deputy Governor of the Bank – might have imagined.

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.