May 22, 2017
Barclays tightens email security after Jes Staley hoax
Barclays has tightened its email security to avoid a repeat of the embarrassment caused earlier this month when the bank's chief executive responded to a message from a prankster posing as his chairman. After a bruising annual meeting this month, Barclays' chief executive Jes Staley replied to an email purporting to be from John McFarlane, which was in fact from a disaffected Barclays customer using the Gmail account john. To prevent a recurrence of the security lapse, Barclays has decided to activate a warning message whenever an employee sends a message to an external email address on a mobile device, which previously only happened on desktop computers. Cyber security experts and rival bankers said the lapse at Barclays exposed the fact that many senior executives and chairmen continue to use personal email accounts and lack the training needed to avoid the pitfalls of the online world. The prankster told the FT that he counted on the fact that most email software does not show the full email address unless a user clicks on the sender's name.
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