The Bank of England's new fintech accelerator is already bearing fruit. Following a successful proof-of-concept, one of the participants, Anomali, has been enlisted to help the bank monitor and mitigate cyber threats.
Launched in June, the accelerator is designed to boost the BofE's practical experience with fintech, with firms invited to apply to work with it on POCs that address challenges unique to the central bank.
Anomali was picked to work on a system to consolidate threat intelligence into a searchable repository that can optimise information collation, enrichment and sharing to support a "proactive, intelligence-led" cyber-defence strategy.
The BofE says that during a two month period it found Anomali’s Threatstream platform intuitive and that it integrated well with existing sources of information and allowed highly efficient, automated ingestion and sharing of data.
The central bank says that Anomali's technology could be used to boost the sharing of high quality and validated threat information within trusted circles of peer organisations. With this in mind, the pair will extend their "working relationship".
The bank has also been using the accelerator to work with fintech startups on POCs looking a range of areas such as blockchain and data analysis. More firms will be invited to join the next round in the spring.