City 'war game' prepares staff for Games chaos

 
'War game': Workers were hit by a security alert as part of the preparations for the Olympics
10 April 2012

Thousands of financial staff in the City arrived at their desks today to an alert that there had been a cyber-attack as part of a "war game" to prepare for the Olympics.

Workers were confronted with the scenarios that cash machines had stopped working and customers switched to debit cards en masse and internet banking was brought to a halt.

Throughout the day they were kept on tenterhooks with regular updates that the crisis was deepening.

In a second simulated meltdown to increase the pressure on war games "players", they were told that key road junctions had become gridlocked and Tube stations pivotal to the Olympics, such as Canary Wharf and London Bridge, were shut down.
A spokeswoman for the Financial Services Authority would not reveal details of the war game, but said: "At various points we will crank up the severity. People will have to think about the impact, mitigation and then how to return to business as usual. We are looking at what could happen from the micro-level to how it would affect the man on the street."

Up to 5,000 staff from 87 of London's biggest banks and other financial institutions today took part in the exercise simulating a crisis during the Games next July.

Organised by the FSA, the drill involved two emergency scenarios - a cyber-attack on banks and widespread travel disruption.

The FSA sent out bulletins explaining what had gone wrong and teams at each institution tried to respond.

The scenarios could include a complete shutdown of the London Underground to the failure of cash machines or a combination of the two.

Some banks have put as many as 70 people on alert, while smaller institutions are devoting only a handful to the FSA's sixth "marketwide exercise".

The past two exercises, in 2006 and 2009, focused on a flu pandemic and severe weather disruptions respectively. This year's exercise is pegged to market conditions on August 3, in the middle of the Games.

The FSA added: "The market-wide exercise is carried out to assess and improve the resilience of the financial services sector, during a major operational disruption and is an important part of planning for major disruptions. It's about assessing their business continuity systems and updating them where necessary and the authorities identifying further areas for attention."

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