Farris Lecture - Regulating Cyber Risk: Revisiting the Current Prudential Approach

Event Description: 

Cyber risk has become one of the most complex emerging challenges of the financial system. Financial regulators around the world have repeatedly named cyber risk as one of the greatest threats to the sound functioning of the financial system. It has grown alongside the financial sector’s increased reliance on technology and use of sophisticated digital tools. The modern financial ecosystem has also become increasingly connected in its operations and is dependent on a shared network of information systems and technological interconnections between financial system participants. Cyber incidents no longer merely pose a problem for an individual institution but present a larger risk to the system as a whole. In this presentation, I discuss the Canadian banking system’s cyber risk governance framework. I argue that the existing regulatory approach falls short of what is needed to meet the unique challenges of cyber risk in the financial sector. I advocate for complementing the current quantitative paradigm that underlies regulation with a resilience-centric approach aimed at better accommodating and learning from unpredictable cyber incidents.

This lecture qualifies for 1 hour of CPD credit.

Lecture: 5:00-6:00 pm
Reception: 6:00-7:00 pm

Please note this is a hybrid event, to register, please contact Michelle Burchill and indicate whether you will attend in person or via Zoom.

Speaker:

Dr. Maziar Peihani holds the Lawson Lundell UBC Professorship of Business Law. His teaching and research focus on the intersection of law and the financial system, particularly on banking regulation, financial crises, financial institution restructuring, and sovereign debt markets. Before joining UBC in 2019, Maziar worked as the lead in-house expert on financial law at the Centre for International Governance Innovation, a Canadian think tank focused on issues of global governance, law and regulation. In 2018, he served as a member of the Task Force on “an International Financial Architecture for Stability and Development,” an advisory to the Argentine G20 Presidency. He also helped lead a policy initiative on a model law for sovereign bond restructuring with the governments of Ontario and Singapore. Previously, Maziar was a Senior Fellow with the Hennick Centre for Business and Law at Osgoode Hall Law School and a Research Fellow with the Centre for Banking and Financial Law at the National University of Singapore. Maziar’s research has been published in refereed law journals such as the Osgoode Hall Law Journal and Queen’s Law Journal, as well as interdisciplinary journals such as the Journal of Financial Regulation and the Canadian Foreign Policy Journal. In 2021, he delivered the keynote speech on the resolution of small and medium-sized credit institutions at the Financial Protection Forum, which brought together federal and provincial regulatory authorities.

This endowment was established by Farris LLP to commemorate the firm's 100th anniversary, honouring the memory of two distinguished partners of the firm: Mr. C. Francis Murphy, QC and Mr. Peter W. Butler, QC. The fund provides an annual grant to reward excellence in teaching and research in business law and advocacy by a member of the Faculty. Part of the annual grant supports a public lecture by the recipient faculty member to interested practitioners, enhancing the quality of interaction between the academic and practicing legal communities in British Columbia.