The Treasury Committee recently called on the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) and Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) to help to prevent banks from suffering further failures and breaches of their IT systems.

Andrew Tyrie MP, chairman of the Treasury Committee, wrote to the regulators, as well as both the CEOs of RBS and HSBC, to request further assurances from the regulators that they are acting to strengthen the resilience and security of IT systems in financial services.

"Banks continue to suffer failures and breaches of their IT systems, exposing millions of customers to uncertainty, disruption and sometimes distress,” said Mr Tyrie.

“We can’t carry on like this.

“Responsibility for sound IT systems is often lacking at the highest levels of management, and ultimately customers pay the price.”

Mr Tyrie wrote on behalf of the Treasury Committee urging the regulators to take action to ensure banks improved the resilience and security of their systems and enhanced IT expertise at board level.

“The regulators themselves also need a clear division of responsibilities to avoid duplication and gaps in their approach to address these problems.

“Customers remain more exposed than necessary to the risks of IT failures, including delays in paying bills and an inability to obtain access to their own money.

“A great deal of work still needs to be done.

“So I have written today to the FCA and the PRA for further assurances that they are getting on with it."

Responding to Mr Tyrie’s comments, the FCA told Bridging & Commercial: “The FCA takes a co-operative approach to addressing IT resilience in the financial sector, working with government, government agencies, including the newly established National Cyber Security Centre, the Bank of England, and other regulators, nationally and internationally.

“Firms should have adequate defences and effective plans to identify and respond to cyber-attacks.”

Meanwhile, Scott Underwood, head of solutions consulting at Niu Solutions, suggested that cloud technology was the key to improving outdated systems.

“One of the biggest problems banks face with their software systems is the perceived need to rely on outdated and unwieldy legacy systems.

“The best way to tackle this problem is by looking to the latest cloud technology.”

Scott explained that more and more firms were migrating their services to the cloud due to the flexibility, cost-efficiency and the ability to easily scale services when required.

Despite this, Scott warned that some banks were reluctant to adopt cloud technology.

“However, despite the many benefits the cloud can offer, many banks are still hesitant in adopting such technology, fearing that security threats might be more prominent in the cloud, which could result in regulatory fines and other penalties.”

Scott suggested that collaboration was the most important factor in ensuring that cloud applications were secure.

“Security in the cloud is a shared responsibility and in order to reap the benefits, banks and cloud providers will need to work together to employ the right tools, practices and resource to combat cyber threat.

“Only then can firms achieve absolute security and compliance and convenience that the cloud can provide.”

The Bank of England on behalf of the PRA said it had no comment to make on this story.