Project Raven: using AI to assess financial system's cyber security and resilience

Updated 30 April 2024

Financial sector ecosystems are complex and interconnected across borders. Cyber threats against them and their critical third-party suppliers represent a serious and constantly evolving threat to the soundness and stability of financial institutions and financial systems.

Project Raven, launched by the BIS Innovation Hub Nordic Centre, aims to create a new solution to help authorities comprehensively assess the cyber security and resilience maturity readiness of their countries' financial systems.

As part of their responsibility to safeguard financial stability, central banks have a crucial role in overseeing the cyber security and operational resilience frameworks of financial institutions and financial market infrastructures. In parallel, central banks and regulatory authorities must also assess their own practices and those of their critical service suppliers.

As these threats continue to grow and evolve, they increase the demand for timely data and require a regular exchange of information and best practices, and public-private collaboration. These are essential to having a holistic view of the cyber maturity and readiness of financial institutions and their third parties. It also helps ensure that the public and private sectors are prepared and able to respond in the event of any cyber incident.

With Project Raven's solution, central banks and regulatory authorities will be able to use artificial intelligence to:

  1. enable fast and easy access to a range of complex information, standards and guidelines
  2. collect and analyse cyber security and resilience data to get a holistic view of the maturity and readiness of the financial sector and identify areas of action and trends over time
  3. enable efficiency through the intelligent completion of multiple reporting requirements and the reuse of data

The name Raven refers to the Norse god Odin, who sent his two ravens to fly around the world to gather information and report back to him.