Of course, professionals know better than to blame the equipment. But the presence of unmanaged switches in a network for high-volume transactions between banks is a red flag the size of China. I don&#x27;t think &quot;blame it all on the switches&quot; is the point the article is trying to make. The switches are mentioned to signal the complete lack of network security at the bank.<p>We use this kind of signaling a lot: I work in IT, and we regularly perform entry-audits for new SMB customers. We use phrases like in the article to illustrate the competence level of the client: &quot;the desktops are still on XP&quot;, &quot;their network is a single &#x2F;16&quot;, &quot;they have Sweex switches&quot;, &quot;the main equipment room is shared with the janitor&quot;. That doesn&#x27;t necessarily mean that there&#x27;s nothing else wrong at the client, and there may even be a good reason for that particular situation -- but between engineers, it still provides a good indication of what the client environment is like.<p>More on topic, I have to ask: doesn&#x27;t SWIFT (which is a global organization specifically for interbank communication) have security baselines for connected banks to meet? Don&#x27;t they perform physical audits before connecting a new bank to their network, and recurring audits thereafter? How on earth can there be &quot;a handful of central banks in developing countries that [are] equally insecure&quot;, yet still connected to SWIFT?<p>They&#x27;re banks FCOL, operational security should be their core business. It&#x27;s not like they can&#x27;t afford it, just one less Bentley for the CEO.