Virgin Money plans $250m barricade against AI-powered cybercrime wave

afr.com:

London | ASX-listed British challenger bank Virgin Money will spend £130 million ($250 million) in the next three years to armour-plate itself againsta coming wave of AI- and quantum-enabled fraud and cybercrime.

Britain’s sixth-largest bank said tooling up to fight the looming threat would mean a short-term hit to profits, but would “mitigate against the risk of greater impact on the bank and our customers in the future”.

“This is large language models with the power of quantum computing, and puts the threat on a whole other level,” Virgin Money CEO David Duffy told The Australian Financial Review.

The bank’s cuts to its branch network will help fund the fight against cybercrime. Emily Macinnes

“The power of it is rising exponentially. And whether it’s deep fake video and voice, or it’s just authenticity on email, or text– whatever it is, it’s rapidly growing in its sophistication and threat level. So I think you just have to get to a point where you’re staying ahead of the curve rather than catching up.”

Mr Duffy said he expected to see other banks in Britain and overseas, including in Australia, similarly boost their investment.

“I would be fairly sure that in the next year or two years, it’ll become the central theme, with the Bank of England, with regulators, with everybody here and overseas as well,” he said.

He said banks would not be collaborating to ward off the threat. But they would in effect cooperate, by using the same third-party cybersecurity providers.

“The platform creators learn from each of the banks the best solutions for the best outcomes, in situations that might vary,” he said. “You don’t end up disclosing proprietary protection methods, but you do have a platform that’s constantly generating best