The rush to a green economy must not come at the cost of data security, particularly for financial services companies, specialist consultant Stephen McPartland has warned.
McPartland, who was a Conservative member of parliament for Stevenage from 2010-2024 and was the author of the McPartland Review into Cyber Security, spoke to FT Adviser at the recent F&TRC AI in Financial Advice conference.
He said: "It's so important to ensure the cyber security of Britain".
Speaking in his capacity as founder of Green Cyber Research, a not-for-profit organisation to help the UK take a global lead on green cyber and net zero cyber security, he said businesses needed to be aware of the security around the technology supporting the drive to net zero.
According to McPartland, there is a "massive vulnerability" inside the green tech that companies are already employing, and companies need to be aware of where the technological components are coming from in the supply chain.
McPartland explained: "If you think about economic resilience, we know there are hostile states and criminal elements within there who would want to undermine the economic and social fabric of the UK.
"As we transition to a net zero economy, we need to think about cyber security, and securing those products and how they are used."
He said this was especially so for data-rich companies such as financial advisers and wealth managers, with billions of pounds collectively potentially at risk.
In a nutshell, a financial adviser whose green tech - solar panels or energy, for example - might be connected to their mobile devices, needs to be absolutely sure that this technology could not be used to hack into the adviser's mobile device and steal client data.
McPartland said: "People often forget that big companies stand on the shoulders of lots of smaller companies. Consider the Ministry of Defence payroll hack - it wasn't the MoD that was hacked, but a smaller company that held the data.
"Ransomware as a service is very sophisticated at looking at supply chains. It's not just a concern that if an adviser gets hacked, then his lights go out [or transactions stop].
"What if the adviser is looking at energy uses on their phone? If this is connected to their systems, the hackers can use this as a gateway. Maybe this is the open car door."
Small firms are particularly susceptible due to not having the same sort of rigorous security processes that big banks would have, for example.
Yet every company in the UK is digital and progressing with digital developments.
This is why the UK needs to take a global lead to help Britain's SMEs to transform to the digital and green economies, while making sure they are doing so in a data-secure fashion.
