A global IT outage on Friday, July 19, caused by a botched update from cyber company Cloudstrike, highlighted vulnerabilities in the banking system. While UK banks were mostly unaffected, the event underscored the risks of over-reliance on cloud infrastructure for data storage. Experts warn that such outages could become more common, posing significant risks to financial stability. The Bank of England has already expressed concerns about this reliance. As cybercrime costs the UK economy £27 billion annually, the financial sector faces increasing threats. The rise in attacks and predicted outages in the financial sector have sparked calls for people to ensure they are never cashless. While customers cannot prevent a cloud server from malfunctioning or being hacked, they can protect their individual banking accounts by using biometric security features, avoiding saving card details online, and being cautious with public Wi-Fi.