Troels Oerting, group chief security officer for Barclays, is networking with his counterparts at other big banks along with government officials to swap tips, techniques, and hunches under the umbrella group, the Cyber Defense Alliance. 

Oerting, who led the European Cybercrime Centre in The Hague before joining Barclays in 2015, has assigned some of his people to join allies from 4 other big U.K. banks at an operations center in London’s Canary Wharf complex. They sit side by side with police officers from the U.K. National Cyber Crime Unit.

Oerting, who recognizes the challenge his industry-government ‘fusion cell’ faces, says his adversaries (the hackers) excel at something that can’t be addressed with deep pockets or killer software: They’re superb networkers. “The organized crime groups in cyber are sharing much better than we are at the moment.” “They are sharing methodologies, knowledge, tools, practices - what works and what doesn’t.”

The effort, the first of its kind in the U.K., mirrors a similar initiative in the U.S. called the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance, a nonprofit in Pittsburgh that brings together academics, corporate security executives, intelligence operatives, and law enforcement officials.

Joining forces marks a big change for institutions long reluctant to share information about their IT systems, let alone how they’re compromised. But they’ve decided they better reboot that mindset fast if they want to counter the online onslaught assailing their walls.