Cyber Attack would ‘cripple’ our financial services

Ireland would come to a financial standstill and medical procedures would be stalled if the country was hit by a cyber attack.

“If something happened to our financial services here, similar to what happened to the NHS (in Friday’s international ransomware ‘WannaCry’ cyber attack) it would have a crippling impact in terms of people accessing cash, paying their mortgages and making payments in general,” said Pat Moran, head of cyber security at professional services firm PwC.

The IT forensics and cyber security expert said the Ulster Bank systems failure in the summer of 2012, which affected 600,000 customers’ ATM withdrawals and processing of payments over a month-long period, exemplified how such a cyber attack would affect our financial services.