MAS Establishes Financial Sector Cloud Resilience Forum

The Monetary Authority of Singapore, MAS, has published a press statement to announce the launch of a new Financial Sector Cloud Resilience Forum which will meet twice a year from now on. An inaugural meeting was held on April 5, 2023 and brought together several cloud service providers (e.g. Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure) and various Asia Pacific financial services regulators to „exchange views on appropriate public cloud risk management practices for the financial sector“. The key takeaways from this initial meeting are the following:
– financial market participants increasingly rely upon cloud service providers even in the performance of critical service functions;
– it is crucial that cloud service providers support their clients in the maintainance of high standards to ensure operational resilience;
– cloud service providers, financial regulators, and financial institutions need to closely cooperate to create „IT resilience and security best practices“; and
– cloud service providers and financial regulators need to deepen their collaboration for greater information sharing on relevant issues such as latest technologies, cyber security protection measures, and industry best practices.
The initial participants of the forum on part of regulators included the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, the Bank of Indonesia, the Otoritas Jasa Keuangan (Indonesian Financial Services Authority), the Bank of Japan, the Japan Financial Services Agency, the Korea Financial Supervisory Service, the Bank Negara Malaysia (Malaysian Central Bank), the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas (Philippines Central Bank), and the Bank of Thailand.