In a sobering address that echoed both urgency and vulnerability, Ian Stuart, Chief Executive of HSBC UK, shared how the never-ending wave of cyberattacks is keeping even the top banking leaders on edge. Speaking before a Treasury Committee session on May 20, 2025, Stuart confessed, “It does worry me—we can be attacked, and we are being attacked all the time.” His words reveal a chilling truth: the battleground has shifted from vaults to virtual firewalls.
Cybersecurity has become a frontline priority for HSBC, one of the UK’s most prominent banking giants, now investing hundreds of millions annually to strengthen its digital defences. The cyber threat is real, growing, and constant.
But HSBC isn’t alone. A rising tide of cyber incidents has battered other major institutions too. Recent breaches at retail giants and the January outage at another major bank that disrupted 1.2 million customers have shaken public trust. In just two years, top banks in the UK have endured over 800 hours—nearly 33 days—of downtime due to cyberattacks and IT breakdowns.
Professor Oli Buckley, a digital security scholar, painted the bigger picture: “It goes beyond just protecting customer data. A breach doesn’t just risk individual accounts; it can ripple through markets, reputations, public confidence, and beyond.”
With HSBC processing 1,000 transactions every second and executing 8,000 tech changes each week, the sheer scale of operations makes them vulnerable to even the smallest gaps in security. While automation, red-team exercises, and tighter oversight of tech vendors are now standard practice, the hackers are evolving faster, armed with ransomware kits, phishing tools for hire, and sometimes even nation-backed strategies.
The financial impact is massive. One bank alone may have to pay over £12.5 million in compensation after a system failure earlier this year. But the true cost may be trust itself—an asset far more difficult to restore once broken.
As HSBC UK CEO Stuart concluded, “We’re no longer fighting lone wolves—we’re confronting a global cyber threat landscape that’s getting more dangerous by the day.”
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