Policy Briefing — MAS Technology Risk Management Update
Singapore’s Monetary Authority released enhanced Technology Risk Management Guidelines, raising expectations for board oversight, third-party controls, and incident reporting across financial institutions.
Executive briefing: On January 18, 2021, the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) published enhanced Technology Risk Management Guidelines, tightening governance and operational resilience expectations for banks, insurers, and capital markets intermediaries. Boards must now evidence stronger technology strategy oversight, while institutions need layered access controls, secure software development, and prompt incident escalation to MAS.
Immediate compliance priorities
- Board accountability. Update board charters and risk committee agendas to cover technology risk tolerance, investment prioritisation, and policy approvals as outlined in paragraph 3.1.
- Third-party management. Inventory service providers, assess concentration risks, and embed exit strategies, encryption, and monitoring requirements per paragraph 8.3.
- Incident reporting. Refresh escalation runbooks so major system outages, data breaches, and cyber-attacks are reported to MAS within the prescribed timelines.
Control alignment
- Identity and access management. Enforce least privilege, multi-factor authentication, and periodic access reviews for privileged users, with logging retained for forensic analysis.
- Secure development lifecycle. Integrate threat modelling, code review, and vulnerability scanning gates into CI/CD pipelines to address guideline paragraphs 9.2 and 9.3.
- Resilience testing. Conduct regular penetration tests and scenario-based recovery exercises, documenting lessons learned and remediation commitments.
Enablement moves
- Benchmark existing controls against MAS’ annexed control objectives and map gaps to remediation sprints with accountable owners.
- Establish a cross-functional register that links assets, business services, recovery time objectives, and vendor dependencies.
- Run joint exercises with key outsourcers to validate remote operations, privileged access revocation, and data destruction procedures.
Sources
- Monetary Authority of Singapore: Technology Risk Management Guidelines
- MAS media release on enhanced Technology Risk Management Guidelines
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