On April 4, the Boston Fed hosted an inaugural Cybersecurity Conference—with more than 115 leaders representing 60 financial institutions from across New England—focused on cyber challenges facing the banking industry and how financial institutions can best position themselves in today's digital-dependent world.

The gathering served as an important landmark in the Bank's emerging efforts aimed at mitigating cybersecurity risk to the overall financial system. Through convening, educating, and collaborating with leaders and practitioners of constituent banks, the Boston Fed is working to engage in proactive risk management efforts, including cyber-threat and best practice sharing among regional financial institutions in order to enable proactive defense, diligent responses, and fast recovery.

"We are in a unique position to serve as a convener—for financial institutions, and even more broadly, for the banking industry," said Boston Fed Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer Don Anderson. "Cyber-threats are coming from all over the world and have the potential to impact the financial and payments systems. Regardless of size or geography, all banks have to be prepared for this imminent enterprise risk."

The half-day conference was an opportunity for leaders of financial institutions to hear from experts in the field, including Boston Fed leaders and cybersecurity specialists from the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the U.S. Department of Treasury, and the nonprofit venture capital firm In-Q-Tel.

Topics included cybersecurity and financial stability; emerging technologies impact on information security; a comparative perspective on financial sector resilience; the interconnected and interdependent digital world; the future of cybersecurity; cryptocurrencies and the implications on cybersecurity; and finally, the role of board-level executives within cybersecurity context and recent statutory developments.

The inaugural conference’s agenda, speakers, and presentations are available on the 2016 Cybersecurity Conference event page.