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Bank of England to crack down on 'secretive' cloud computing services

itnews.com.au

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Re: Bank of England to crack down on 'secretive' cloud computing services

#11

Post by gizdan »

nindalf wrote: post #8
cm2187 wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also changing IT in a bank is slow, dead slow. A bank wouldn’t be able to cope with being booted overnight from its infrastructure Parler-style.

That FUD is unwarranted. No bank is going to be kicked off it’s infrastructure. Bringing up Parler seems completely irrelevant.

While Parler is somewhat irrelevant and the likelihood of any bank being taken down for similar reasons as Parler, it isn't completely incomprehensible.

There have been many horror stories of businesses being banned, blocked, or messed around by Google and Amazon. Their policy does not protect anyone but themselves. It is within the realms of reality for bank to be taken down by them in a matter of days.

Re: Bank of England to crack down on 'secretive' cloud computing services

#12

Post by pjc50 »

dsign wrote: post #10

The risk Bank of England doesn't like comes with the territory, and everybody who uses public cloud is subject to it. The only difference is that smaller companies don't have a big megaphone or the clout that they have, and must either accept the terms and shut up or find an alternate solution. If Bank of England wants to use their power constructively, they can literally go shopping for data center and IT companies…

> risk Bank of England doesn't like comes with the territory

The BoE is the central bank; to a great extent they get to define the territory. Especially with regard to risk. Basel III and that kind of thing.

> they can literally go shopping for data center and IT companies to serve their needs.

No, it's not about what they themselves buy, it's about what all the banks in the UK buy. A situation where all the banks are using the same cloud provider(s) is unacceptable because of the high risk of correlated failure. It's bad enough when one bank goes down and its ATMs stop working; if EU-west-1 goes down and takes out all the banks, that's a disaster, and the BoE is rightly taking steps to prevent it.

Re: Bank of England to crack down on 'secretive' cloud computing services

#13

Post by wdb »

gizdan wrote: post #11
nindalf wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That FUD is unwarranted. No bank is going to be kicked off it’s infrastructure. Bringing up Parler seems completely irrelevant.

While Parler is somewhat irrelevant and the likelihood of any bank being taken down for similar reasons as Parler, it isn't completely incomprehensible. There have been many horror stories of businesses being banned, blocked, or messed around by Google and Amazon. Their policy does not protect anyone but themselves. It is within the realms of reality for bank to be taken down by them in a matter of days.

Guess, as Bank you just need to make sure you have Amazon and Google as customer :)

Re: Bank of England to crack down on 'secretive' cloud computing services

#14

Post by pjc50 »

gizdan wrote: post #11
nindalf wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That FUD is unwarranted. No bank is going to be kicked off it’s infrastructure. Bringing up Parler seems completely irrelevant.

While Parler is somewhat irrelevant and the likelihood of any bank being taken down for similar reasons as Parler, it isn't completely incomprehensible. There have been many horror stories of businesses being banned, blocked, or messed around by Google and Amazon. Their policy does not protect anyone but themselves. It is within the realms of reality for bank to be taken down by them in a matter of days.

Kick a UK bank off cloud infrastructure for no good reason and you will get rung up by the PM, who will make it clear that you will reinstate them or be forever banned from government procurement.

Re: Bank of England to crack down on 'secretive' cloud computing services

#15

Post by kaydub »

If you're that size why not split the workload between a couple or all 3 of the big providers. Get them to work against each other.

All the concerns about vendor lock-in are ridiculous right now. Prices have consistently lowered for all cloud providers.

Re: Bank of England to crack down on 'secretive' cloud computing services

#17

Post by csomar »

pjc50 wrote: post #14
gizdan wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While Parler is somewhat irrelevant and the likelihood of any bank being taken down for similar reasons as Parler, it isn't completely incomprehensible. There have been many horror stories of businesses being banned, blocked, or messed around by Google and Amazon. Their policy does not protect anyone but themselves. It is within the realms of reality for bank to be taken down by them in a matter of days.

Kick a UK bank off cloud infrastructure for no good reason and you will get rung up by the PM, who will make it clear that you will reinstate them or be forever banned from government procurement.

The issue is that the Cloud provider is not UK-based. If they were to ban a bank, it's probably due to pressure from their own government (US) who could be having some problems with their client's government (UK). It's not like it is not happening right now.

Re: Bank of England to crack down on 'secretive' cloud computing services

#18

Post by PeterisP »

dsign wrote: post #10

The risk Bank of England doesn't like comes with the territory, and everybody who uses public cloud is subject to it. The only difference is that smaller companies don't have a big megaphone or the clout that they have, and must either accept the terms and shut up or find an alternate solution. If Bank of England wants to use their power constructively, they can literally go shopping for data center and IT companies…

What BoE can say is that certain risks are unacceptable for UK banks, period. It's not BoE shopping for data centers, it would be BoE setting the rules for every bank shopping for data centers.

If BoE does not like some risk that really does come with the territory and everybody who uses public cloud is subject to that risk, oh well, then that would imply that UK banks have to keep out of that territory and can't use public cloud for their key services - it is a bit drastic, but certainly something that BoE has the right to rule if it really wanted.

On the other hand, if there's a way to use public cloud and meet the requirements, but current major vendors are simply not offering it, then BoE can make up arbitrary requirements, followed by the major UK banks going to the major cloud vendors with a proposal "meet these requirements or we won't use your services, because we'd be prohibited to".

Re: Bank of England to crack down on 'secretive' cloud computing services

#19

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

pmlnr wrote: post #6
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #4

> But big providers could dictate terms and conditions - as well as prices - to key financial firms. What exactly is the concern here? Cloud compute is becoming cheaper over time due to market forces. Its not like Amazon is cornering the market for CPUs.

> What exactly is the concern here? Top of the article: > Concentration of compute could threaten financial stability. If BigCloud goes down, so does banking, and banking doesn't seem to like that - and I'm with them.

This is obvious, concentration of risk is a legitimate concern. I was specifically wondering about the "dictate terms and conditions - as well as prices" line, which sounds bullshit to me.

Re: Bank of England to crack down on 'secretive' cloud computing services

#20

Post by DrBazza »

One of the (legal ?) requirements we had to meet back in the 00s was that financial software (quant code, options trading) was "reproducible" for some length of time (7 years?). That meant: version control (SCCS, CVS, svn), archiving OS versions (SunOS, Solaris), and kit (Sun workstations and servers).

I have no idea if the last 2 ("OS", hardware) is even achievable in 2021. I can always get my source code from git, and possibly the 'configuration', but can I expect to run cloudy code in 7 years time?

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