Oliver Topping comments on PASA’s new Cybercrime Guidance for Pensions Administrators

The Pensions Administration Standards Association (PASA) has launched new Cybercrime Guidance for Pension Administrators.

The Guidance aims to help administrators by outlining four key areas covering different elements of cybercrime: meeting legal and regulatory standards, understanding their organisation’s vulnerability to cybercrime, ensuring resilience, and finally in case of an attack, remaining able to fulfil critical functions.

Oliver Topping, senior associate at Sackers, commented: “Cybercrime is a significant and growing risk to pension schemes. TPR has been clear that cyber security measures form a key part of the internal controls which trustees are legally required to put in place.

We welcome PASA’s guidance for pension scheme administrators, who typically hold a lot of valuable member data, and should be a key focus of trustees’ cyber resilience planning.

Trustees can use this new guidance as a prompt to engage with their administrators, to make sure that the risk areas identified in the guidance are fully understood, and that appropriate steps are taken to ensure resilience against ever developing cyber threats.”