Nothing Brings Banks Together Like a Good Hack

Troels Oerting has a problem. As the group chief security officer for Barclays, he has a squad of elite ex-government agents patrolling the company’s digital perimeter. He also has a hefty budget to acquire state-of-the-art technology to protect Britain’s second-biggest bank from cyber attacks.

But Oerting, with no small dose of grudging admiration, says his adversaries excel at something that can’t be addressed with deep pockets or killer software: They’re superb networkers. “The organized crime groups in cyber are sharing much better than we are at the moment,” says Oerting, a Dane with a square jaw and the watchful eyes of a cop who’s investigated the underworld for 35 years. “They are sharing methodologies, knowledge, tools, practices—what works and what doesn’t.”