US Banks Prepare for Cyber Attacks After Latest Russia Sanctions

U.S. banks are preparing for retaliatory cyber attacks after Western nations slapped a raft of stringent sanctions on Russia for invading Ukraine, cyber experts and executives said.

Tensions between Russia and the West escalated on Saturday as the United States and its allies moved to block some Russian banks from the SWIFT international payment system and placed curbs on the Russian central bank's international reserves.

Western governments have warned for weeks that the tensions could spark massive cyber attacks from Russia or its supporters. Some executives said the latest measures may be the trigger.

"There will be some retaliatory measures taken by them, and I think in the least costly way that they can do it – that means some kind of cyber attack," said Steven Schweitzer, senior fixed income portfolio manager at the Swarthmore Group in New York.

Global banks, already top targets for cyber attacks in peacetime, are increasing network monitoring, drilling for cyber attack scenarios, searching their networks for threats and lining up extra staff in case hostile activity surges, according to cyber security experts.

Among the threats they are preparing for: ransomware and malware attacks; denial-of-service attacks that take down websites; and data wiping and theft, possibly simultaneously.