ECB Pushes Banks to Digitize Amid Rising Cyber Threats
The European Central Bank is pushing banks to digitize their operations as part of its strategy to improve resilience and competitiveness in the financial sector.
This comes as cyber incidents among major banks doubled between 2022 and 2024, with non-bank financial entities increasingly encroaching on services once exclusive to licensed institutions.
The ECB's multi-pronged approach includes new regulation, a sovereign digital currency, and infrastructure for tokenized finance. The Digital Operational Resilience Act (DORA) requires banks to actively manage their information and communications technology risks and report major incidents to supervisors.
Banks' own modernization efforts are creating new vulnerabilities, with 38% of bank incidents in 2025 linked to IT changes. ECB officials have framed DORA as necessary armor against existential threats.