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In an interesting approach to finding a creative solution, The Bank of England has set itself up for hackers to take a crack at their systems and data. What?

It’s old news that banks and financial institutions have been the targets of cyber criminals and hackers over the past several months. Estimates of affected clients range as high as 83 million in 2014 alone. So are data breaches and stolen data inevitable?

Banks in the United Kingdom are going to test that proposition. A group of leading British Lenders, led by the Bank of England have come together to enable a team of certified hackers to attack their data systems at random. This is a unique approach because the attempts will be made in a live environment rather than the typical simulated context.

The Bank of England, as the leader of this experiment, will apparently promulgate some general guidelines for the attempted hacking but individual banks will be free to determine how far and how extensive the hacking attempts will be. Under the proposed guidelines only a very few bank employees will be aware of the tests or the timing of the attempted hacks.

All of this is a coordinated and focused response to potential weaknesses in financial data security that threatens individual clients as well as creating larger scale economic harm. The tests will be run in conjunction with British and International law enforcement agencies and may provide needed insight into the techniques and technology available to the world’s hackers.

Do we really want to know how good we are at thwarting attempted data breaches? Banks in England do!