LAUSANNE (Reuters) – Executives from the world’s largest trading houses and mining companies are discussing market trends, cyber security and the impact of Russia’s Ukraine invasion at the FT Commodities Global Summit this week.
GERARD DELSAD, CIO OF VITOL GROUP
“We’ve seen in increase in cyber attacks over the years. We monitor closely. It was stable until the beginning of February when there was an attack against several oil companies in Europe and you could see another ramp up the day before the invasion of Ukraine. We invest a lot to protect ourselves and we train our people. The biggest risk is often us.”
“It’s very difficult to trace back cyber attacks. They are clever and go through various hoops. It’s almost impossible to find out where it comes from.”
“There’s a tsunami of data. We have a data refinery and tools to make sense of it … To give you an idea of the magnitude of the task, we process close to a 1 billion data points per day and store 180 million. The key is to get the data before it becomes common knowledge. “
CYRIL REOL, CIO OF MERCURIA ENERGY TRADING
“We are definitely encountering more cyber attacks than before and we’re looking at any kind of event or pattern like someone trying to connect via remote working.”
In terms of attracting tech talent to energy trading:
“There is opportunity for disruption within our industry. We give them the opportunity to be impactful unlike in bigger organisations. Two-thirds of our revenue is from gas, power and carbon … and they want to be part of that energy transition.”
(Reporting by Julia Payne; Editing by Mark Potter)
