At a time of rapidly accelerating cyber risk driven by artificial intelligence, cybersecurity is a core financial stability issue and should be treated as such by policymakers, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) said in a Thursday (May 7) blog post.
Because attacks are becoming faster, automated and more sophisticated, the existing cybersecurity measures must be expanded and sharpened, according to the post.
“Policymakers should prioritize robust resilience standards, supervision focused on systemic transmission channels, and close public-private collaboration on threat intelligence and incident response,” the IMF said.
The rapidly growing threat posed by AI is highlighted by Anthropic’s Mythos, which enables even non-experts to find and exploit vulnerabilities in operating systems and web browsers. With tools such as Mythos, attackers can find and exploit vulnerabilities faster than defenders can patch and remediate them.
This poses a threat to financial stability because attacks can scale across companies and industries. The financial, energy, telecommunications and public services sectors share digital infrastructure, so one vulnerability can have a widespread impact.
While access to advanced AI cyber capabilities is restricted, they’re unlikely to remain contained as model training expands, capabilities diffuse and leaks occur.
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“These features elevate cyber risk to a potential macroeconomic shock,” the IMF said in the post. “Confidence effects, payment disruptions, liquidity strains and fire-sale dynamics could follow if multiple institutions are affected simultaneously.”
The IMF recommends in the post that financial institutions continue to invest in AI tools to combat this threat; that supervisors assess whether these institutions are investing in integration, governance and human oversight of those tools; and that supervisors make resilience a priority so that when defenses are breached, defenders are ready to limit the incident’s spread and ensure rapid recovery.
“As AI reshapes the cyber landscape, the central question for authorities is whether the financial system can continue to function under severe stress,” the IMF said in the post. “Answering that question requires putting systemic risk — and the tools to manage it — at the center of the AI-cyber conversation.”
It was reported in April that a top IMF official said AI can be used for good or bad and that organizations must remain on the frontier of these threats.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News Sunday (May 3) that American banks are working to safeguard against AI-related cyberthreats.
“What we’ve had in the past month was a step change in the power of one large language model, but we’re going to see it from the other AI companies, and it’s important that the U.S. stays ahead here,” Bessent said.
