Fintech visionary Leda Glyptis, a true Sibos Insider, is the resident blogger for Sibos 2020, offering her unique take on this year’s event. Read her fourth blog, part of a series released daily throughout the week.</em> </p> Cyber threats in pyjamas</h2> I joined a panel on cyber hacking yesterday, honestly, because my friend Virginie O’Shea was moderating it and I have missed seeing her face (damn you Covid). Also, I have never known her to not drive a good debate so I thought hey why not. </p> Her panel had gathered the great and the good of the infrastructure world.</p> The people who deal with full-on sabotage threats, not just attacks driven by opportunism and greed. As if those weren’t destabilising enough.</p> I was settling in to watch with no intention of making this the highlight of my daily blog. I just wanted to make myself a little smarter on a topic I don’t claim any expertise in and I committed even though my brain was trying to stray to pointless observations including… IBM has a Force X team, how cool is that? And… the Head of Cyber Intelligence for Barclays has the same dresser in his study as I had in my bedroom in Doha…</p> This is important. I told myself. Focus.There was no need for the pep talk, after all. Even before the intros were done, I was hooked.And here's why.</p> These guys operate in a different world to the rest of us.First of all, they share information, research and insight. There is no competitive edge to be protected. These guys serve the community. They share with government, regulators and peers. That is ‘competitors’ to you and me. They didn’t even stop to explain why.If you don’t understand why, you are part of the problem.</p> These guys have been building technology and tools to enable remote working and cashless payments for a while. The trend was in motion. Sure, the numbers surged but this is what we were travelling towards and the biggest change was that the backup or preferred option of getting into a room to discuss those very challenges was no longer available.</p> Now, I don't mean to suggest for a single second that these experts were nonchalant. But when your job is to prepare for the unexpected, pandemics may not be good news but they are what you’ve been training for. </p> So what they had to say was not unexpected but it was sobering. The factor to observe is humans. Humans looking to take advantage of the disruption, of the slight changes to established normalities. Humans seeking vulnerabilities in remote collaboration tools that have spiked in usage.But also, humans relaxing.</p> Now, years ago I read some research about uniforms in schools (stay with me here).The research showed that uniforms, or at least dress codes, in schools had an interesting and profound impact on learning. Clothes were not just a factor of student comfort. There were clear links between context, attire and posture on the one hand and learning discipline on the other, especially when pertaining to focus, attention-span, concentration and follow-through. </p> I had read the article with morbid fascination as I went to a school that had a uniform I loathed at the time and still despise with surprising energy given I finished high school 24 years ago. I also find sitting in a chair very uncomfortable because of a back injury which is why I take meetings from the floor and sit cross legged on dining room chairs. None of this research suits my preferences.But the findings highlighting the links between apparel and conduct, especially around formality, were compelling despite my own feelings and used extensively to argue both sides of school uniform and office dress code debates.</p> The memories of all those articles and all those studies, my dreaded uniform and the rows and rows of jackets and heels gathering dust in my wardrobe, came rushing in when the Bank of England experts said that the biggest challenge during Covid is not system resilience but humans… relaxing.</p> Working from home, in your slippers may be great but it has an insidious effect on overall formality and awareness. It’s not a system challenge. Accessing sensitive data from home is not necessarily a problem. Handling sensitive information in your pyjamas poses no cyber risk per se. But feeling relaxed while you do it might.</p> By this point of Sibos week, I would have sore feet, tension in my shoulders from carrying my laptop around from session to session and ‘conference hall eyes’ slightly dried out and over-tired from the artificial bright lights of the stage, the booths and the breakout areas. But all of those physical discomforts, and my specially-selected Sibos-proof clothes and shoes (you only make the mistake of heels and tailored outfits once and never forget it) are a physical reminder that you are part of the biggest financial services event in the world. That in the rooms around you CEOs and their teams representing every globally significant institution in the world are sharing views and doing business. And being reminded of that makes your focus a little sharper. It brings you back to the room, no matter how tired you are.</p> So as I hear that the biggest threat to cyber security is the relaxed custodian of sensitive information who becomes sloppy because he’s been working in his pyjamas in the spare bedroom a touch too long, I won’t deny that I straightened my dress and sat up (cross-legged and yet) straighter in my chair. </p>