Cybersecurity

With the digital transformation gathering pace and criminal activity on the rise, cyber attacks are a growing threat. Businesses need to step up their efforts to defend against them. The Swiss Bankers Association sees this as a high priority and made strengthening the financial centre’s cyber resilience a strategic goal in 2018. It has worked with the Swiss Financial Sector Cyber Security Centre (Swiss FS-CSC) and the authorities to take measures that are focused on the financial sector but also benefit the rest of the economy and society as a whole. Close collaboration between the authorities and the private sector is essential to enhancing cyber resilience.

The Swiss banks traditionally meet high standards in terms of cyber security, and every institution has always put a lot of effort into this area. However, the scenario of a broad-based cyber attack on Swiss banks seems more realistic than ever. Such an attack could have a direct impact on the economy and the population at large, potentially resulting in severe collateral damage. It is becoming harder and harder for individual economic actors to look after their own defences, which is why the Federal Council’s advisory board for the future of the Swiss financial centre recommended in 2017 that the financial centre work together with the federal authorities to improve cyber resilience.

The banks did just that, building on the public/private partnership between themselves, insurers, other financial service providers, SIX, the Swiss National Bank and the authorities – especially the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), FINMA and the State Secretariat for International Finance (SIF) – to create the Swiss FS-CSC in 2022. Set up as an association, the Swiss FS-CSC signed an agreement with the NCSC to intensify mutual cooperation in June 2025.

The idea of creating a national centre of competence in cyber security (now the NCSC) was in fact put forward by the SBA. It came to fruition in 2019 with political support from the government and the Swiss Parliament. The NCSC serves as a point of contact for the private sector in cyber security matters. This vital body is headed by Federal Cyber Security Delegate Florian Schütz. The former reporting and analysis centre MELANI was integrated into the NCSC. Its services are now available to a broader group of companies. One of our key strategic goals has thus been achieved.

The Swiss FS-CSC

For a long time, the federal government has been keen to increase its cooperation with various sectors of the economy in the form of public/private partnerships. This is how the Swiss FS-CSC came about in April 2022 with active support from the federal authorities. “With this association, we have laid a solid foundation for ensuring that the financial centre can respond faster and more efficiently to cyber attacks in future,” said the SBA’s Chairman and Deputy CEO August Benz at the founding meeting. The other three members of the Association Board are Alexandra Arni, Head of ICT at the SBA, Marc Cortesi, Chief Information Security Officer at Baloise Group, and Gabor Jaimes, Property, Cyber and Natural Hazard Insurance Expert at the Swiss Insurance Association.

The Swiss FS-CSC’s key services include sharing information with members and with the authorities via the NCSC’s Cyber Security Hub, operating a Crisis Coordination Cell that ensures coordination and communication in the event of a systemic cyber crisis, conducting at least one operational cyber exercise and at least one strategic exercise for members every year, and hosting a monthly call as well as regular talks and webinars. This provides a solid organisational basis for cooperation between banks and insurers on cyber security. In a welcome development, FINMA has recognised the Swiss FS-CSC’s cyber exercises for banks and securities firms in supervisory categories 4 and 5 as meeting their supervisory law obligation in this respect.

Membership of the Swiss FS-CSC is open to financial institutions from Switzerland and Liechtenstein, financial market infrastructures, subsidiaries and branches of foreign financial institutions, their associations, the Swiss National Bank and other financial service providers.

A broad-based Steering Board is responsible for the Swiss FS-CSC’s strategy and crisis organisation. It comprises representatives of systemically important companies, industry associations and the public sector (NCSC, FINMA, SIF, SNB) and is supported by an Expert Group made up of chapters that are open to all interested members.