War on terabytes

IN THE dusty hills north of Madrid, in low-slung buildings guarded closely like bank vaults of old, are the rows of servers that run the far-flung banking empire of Santander, a big international bank. Ever since the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Centre, banks like Santander have invested billions in safeguarding and duplicating their data centres to protect them from terrorist attacks and natural disasters.

The threat against banks has, however, evolved. Although the physical infrastructure of the world’s financial system is largely secure, the software that runs on it is not. Bank bosses and regulators are becoming more concerned by the threat posed to financial stability by networks of hackers that have launched a series of attacks on banks over the past few months.