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Cybersecurity

Swift CEO Expects More Hacking Surprises as Fix Is Years Away

  • CEO speaks directly to the media about attacks for first time
  • Fully upgrading defenses with 11,000 members could take years
Gottfried Leibbrandt.

Gottfried Leibbrandt.

Photographer: Jason Alden/Bloomberg

The chief executive officer of Swift, the interbank messaging system embroiled in a global bank-hacking controversy, says to expect more information about breaches to emerge as fully armoring the network’s defenses is likely to take years.

“We don’t think this is going to be solved overnight, so we’ll be looking for a number of quick wins to improve things in the near term,” Gottfried Leibbrandt, Swift’s CEO, said in an interview from the cooperative’s London office on Wednesday. “The full rollout, and the full shore up, will be a matter of years.”