# : Cyber Resilience: Insights from Stress Testing

**2 Sept**  
Written By [Saiesha Pitroda](/content/all-fna-broadcasts?author=6825c3024b109a092cd591c8/index.html)

**4th September 2025**

**With:**  
| Tanai Khiaonarong (IMF)  
| Kasperi Korpinen (Bank of Finland)  
| Emran Islam (IMF)

In Session #23, **Tanai Khiaonarong** (IMF), **Emran Islam** (IMF), and **Kasperi Korpinen** (Bank of Finland) join FNA to discuss their pioneering framework for **Cyber Stress Testing**. Drawing from their influential IMF working paper, our guests argue that because cyber-attacks are "active" threats—designed to exploit specific vulnerabilities—they require a different analytical lens than traditional credit or liquidity shocks.

The discussion focuses on the use of **computer-based simulations** to model the cascading effects of a cyber incident. By simulating a "total outage" or a "data integrity compromise" at a systemically important bank or an RTGS (Real-Time Gross Settlement) system, central banks can quantify how quickly a cyber-induced liquidity freeze would spread across the entire financial network.

**Key Discussion Points:**

- **The Simulation Mandate:** Why simulations are uniquely capable of capturing the "non-linear" risks and contagion effects of cyber-attacks compared to static stress tests.
  
- **The IMF Framework:** A step-by-step guide to identifying systemic nodes, mapping dependencies, and simulating realistic cyber-adversary behavior.
  
- **Liquidity Contagion:** Analyzing the "Liquidity Sink" effect—how a cyber-attack on one participant can trap funds and prevent the rest of the network from settling obligations.
  
- **Data Integrity vs. Availability:** Discussing the "silent threat" of corrupted transaction data and why it is often more dangerous than a simple system outage.
  
- **Operational Resilience:** Lessons from the Bank of Finland on integrating simulation results into national contingency planning and crisis management.
  
- **Policy & Oversight:** How regulators can use these simulation insights to set more accurate "Maximum Tolerable Downtime" (MTD) targets for critical infrastructure.
  
**Watch on Demand:**

Listen on:  
[Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/episode/0wTNGVQvQMVWlCKqzXu5xx?si=b9d4fce15716478a)  
| [Apple](https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/payment-systems-broadcast-23-project-meridian-fx-cyber/id1772649634?i=1000725546180)  
| [Amazon Music](https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/93293cc8-fa9c-41a8-a3d7-86b413d78941/episodes/f5c4b50e-b5a7-4104-b9a2-988a586fa42f/fna-broadcasts-payment-systems-broadcast-23---project-meridian-fx-cyber-resilience-insights-from-stress-testing)