Krzysztof Dąbrowski, Managing Director of the Security Division of the UKNF, took part in the European Financial Congress panel: ‘Financial Sector Resilience to Geopolitical Challenges – Do We Have a BCP That Really Works?’.

Key points of the address by Krzysztof Dąbrowski:

• The geopolitical situation is a source of various threats and contributes to many risks, including operational risk. It’s not only Russia’s aggression against Ukraine and the conflict orchestrated by Russia against the West using various means, but also the trade wars generated by the tariffs policy in the U.S. 
• The resilience of the financial market is a very important component of the resilience of the State, and maintaining the continuity of critical financial services during a crisis is decisive for maintaining the trust of citizens. We should notice and distinguish various dimensions of resilience, the basic one of which is the business continuity of concrete organisations, i.e. financial firms and the financial supervision authority. In my opinion, the main theme of today’s panel inspires us to reflect on yet another aspect of resilience, which is the horizontal collaboration among financial institutions in situations which cause threats not only for individual organisations but for the stability of the sector as a whole.
• Regulations on operational risk, including DORA, have really enhanced the resilience of financial firms, for example by forcing the introduction and maintenance of business continuity management systems. Yet, in the face of serious threats, maintaining stability of the financial market requires collaboration of various institutions, which is already taking place. Thanks to the maturity of the sector, security (including cybersecurity) is more an area of cooperation than competition, since the continuity of services provided by the financial ecosystem to clients can be ensured more effectively and efficiently by sharing information about threats and incidents.
• The KNF has a special role in building the resilience of the financial sector and this role goes beyond mere supervisory functions. The actions taken proactively by the supervisor in cooperation with financial firms have provided the market with useful tools, such as good practices on the prevention of DDoS or ransomware attacks, and have improved the effectiveness of the process of protecting the society’s access to cash during the lockdown and the initial phase of the full-scale aggression of Russia against Ukraine.