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Barclays DIGITAL

DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURE AUDIT UPDATED 2026-07-11
Digital Score 0.15 /10 C Barclays - BDS-1000 415
Digital 0.15

Evidence-only forensic audit. Scoring happens downstream - see the main dossier for the composite assessment.

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Digital Audit: Barclays

Digital Audit: Barclays

Scope Note

This audit compiles findings from the underlying research memo on Barclays’ digital-technology (Digital domain) relationships relevant to Israel/OPT-related human rights due diligence. Financial-only findings (equity holdings, loan facilities, bond underwriting) are referenced where they provide civil-society-scrutiny context but are flagged as belonging primarily to the V-FIN domain rather than Digital.

Enterprise Technology Stack & Vendor Relationships

Barclays’ publicly disclosed core security-strategy partner is Microsoft, named in a 2024 announcement expanding Barclays’ security strategy through Microsoft Security Solutions 1. Barclays’ current supplier-facing Information and Cyber Security Supplier Control Obligation document (Version 15.0) does not name specific technology vendors 2. Targeted review found no confirmed direct Barclays relationship with Israeli-founded or Israeli-linked cybersecurity vendors including Check Point, Wiz, CyberArk, SentinelOne, or Claroty, nor with Palo Alto Networks (US-headquartered, Israeli-born co-founder). No public evidence identified of a direct Barclays licensing or subscription relationship with any of these vendors.

Barclaycard, Barclays’ cards division, extended an existing contract for Verint Witness Actionable Solutions call-recording and quality-monitoring software in 2008, bringing its total deployment to nearly 10,000 agent seats across contact centres including Dublin 3. A current, active Barclays job posting for a “Verint Contact Center Support Engineer” at a Barclays site in Whippany, New Jersey indicates this Verint relationship remains ongoing 4. This deployment represents a contact-centre-wide, not merely peripheral, dependency on Verint technology within Barclaycard’s operations 3. No confirmed direct Barclays–NICE or NICE Actimize relationship was identified; a reference to NICE Actimize surfaced only via “Target Group,” a UK business-process outsourcer whose client roster includes Barclays, which constitutes an unverified two-hop association rather than a confirmed direct relationship.

Barclays’ major disclosed hybrid/private-cloud infrastructure partner is Hewlett Packard Enterprise, via HPE GreenLake Cloud, first contracted in 2021 and extended and doubled in September 2024 to cover over 100,000 workloads across UK, US and Asia hubs 567. No evidence was found that HPE’s Barclays engagement mandates or deploys Israeli-origin technology, and the disclosed hub geographies of UK, US and Asia do not include Israel 7. No public evidence identified of Israeli-origin technology being mandated or recommended by any of Barclays’ disclosed systems integrators.

Surveillance, Biometrics & Retail Technology

No public evidence identified of Barclays use of Israeli-origin retail surveillance or biometrics vendors such as Trigo, BriefCam, AnyVision/Oosto, or Trax. Barclays’ verified biometric deployments are non-Israeli in origin: voice biometrics for customer authentication were deployed in 2013 for Barclays Wealth & Investment Management call-centre customers using Nuance Communications’ FreeSpeech technology, a US firm later acquired by Microsoft 89. The current operational status of this specific product line is not confirmed by later sourcing.

Barclays deployed employee-monitoring software from Sapience Analytics for approximately 18 months through early 2020, tracking desk-time, task duration and “unaccounted activity” including bathroom breaks 1011. This triggered an ICO investigation, confirmed in August 2020, after Barclays disabled an individual-tracking feature following staff backlash 1213. Sapience Analytics is US/India-headquartered, not Israeli-origin, which rules out an Israeli-origin workforce-surveillance finding for this incident 1011. No public evidence identified of third-party or bundled deployment of Israeli-origin surveillance technology within any Barclays retail or workplace system.

Cloud Infrastructure, Data Residency & Sovereign Cloud Participation

No public evidence identified of Barclays operating, leasing, or co-locating data centre infrastructure within Israel; Barclays’ disclosed data centre operations are UK-based. Barclays is not a participant in Project Nimbus, the Israeli government cloud-computing contract executed by Google Cloud and Amazon Web Services 14. No evidence of any comparable Barclays government-cloud contract with Israeli state bodies was identified. Barclays’ primary disclosed cloud and hosting partners are AWS, Microsoft, Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and HPE GreenLake private cloud, with disclosed hub geographies limited to the UK, US and Asia 567; no Israel-hosted component was identified in any of these disclosures. No public evidence identified of Barclays providing data sovereignty or resilience services to Israeli state institutions.

Defence, Intelligence & Security Sector Technology Relationships

No public evidence identified of any Barclays technology contract, partnership, or service agreement with the Israeli Ministry of Defence, IDF, or Israeli intelligence agencies. No public evidence identified that any Barclays-developed or Barclays-operated technology has been documented as deployed for military, intelligence, or law-enforcement surveillance in Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territory. No public evidence identified of Barclays offensive-cyber or weapons-technology provision.

Barclays’ documented relationship to Israeli military technology is exclusively financial rather than a technology-provision relationship: per a May 2024 War on Want/Palestine Solidarity Campaign/CAAT report, Barclays held over £2 billion in shares and provided £6.1 billion in loans and underwriting to nine arms-related companies including Elbit Systems, BAE Systems, Boeing, Caterpillar, General Dynamics, QinetiQ, Raytheon, Rolls-Royce and Ultra Electronics - a 55% increase since 2021 1516171819. This financing activity is presented here for context but constitutes V-FIN-domain material, as it reflects equity holdings, loan facilities and bond underwriting rather than technology developed, operated, or supplied by Barclays itself 15161718.

AI, Algorithmic & Autonomous Systems

No public evidence identified of Barclays providing AI or machine-learning systems to Israeli state bodies. No public evidence identified of Barclays training data or model development using surveillance-derived data originating from Israel or the Occupied Palestinian Territory. No public evidence identified of Barclays involvement in autonomous systems or lethality-related technology; any such finding would in any case fall outside the Digital domain.

Separately, within Barclays’ own algorithmic workplace-management systems, the Sapience Analytics employee-monitoring deployment used automated tracking of desk-time and task activity, which prompted the ICO investigation described above 10121113; this is classified as a workplace-surveillance finding rather than an Israel-linked AI/algorithmic finding, since Sapience Analytics is not Israeli-origin 1011.

Technology Ecosystem & R&D Footprint

Barclays Capital contracted Ness Technologies in a five-year, $75 million-plus deal announced in 2011 to establish the Israel Development and Engineering Center (IDEC) in Tel Aviv, intended to employ approximately 200 Israeli technology and finance staff supporting Barclays’ international financial and technology operations 2021. The current operational status of IDEC as of 2024–2026 is not confirmed by later sourcing. Barclays’ Israel Corporate & Investment Bank contact office remains listed as active on Barclays’ official site 22, and Dun & Bradstreet lists an active Tel Aviv-Jaffa company profile for Barclays Bank PLC 23, indicating some form of continued corporate presence, though not necessarily continuation of the IDEC R&D function specifically.

Barclays operated the Rise Tel Aviv accelerator (branded the Barclays Accelerator, powered by Techstars), which opened in March 2016 in the former Tel Aviv Stock Exchange building and ran 13-week cohorts of approximately ten fintech and cybersecurity startups per year, with Barclays committing up to £10 million in investment per cohort class 24252627. The accelerator ran at least five annual cohorts through 2019, with Barclays’ own site describing “five rapid years” of fintech innovation in Tel Aviv and announcing its 2019 Tel Aviv cohort class 2829. An Israeli entrepreneur was tapped to head the Tel Aviv accelerator 30. This constitutes a direct, sustained, Barclays-funded and Barclays-operated technology-incubation relationship with the Israeli fintech and cybersecurity startup ecosystem, confirmed from 2016 through 2019, with later years unconfirmed in available sourcing 24252627282930.

No public evidence identified of Barclays acquiring an Israeli-origin technology company, as distinct from its accelerator investments in early-stage startups, which are pre-acquisition mentorship and seed relationships rather than acquisitions. No public evidence identified of Barclays patents or joint intellectual-property development with Technion, Hebrew University, or the Weizmann Institute.

For historical completeness: Barclays held a controlling 50.1% interest in Barclays Discount Bank Limited (Israel) from 1972, fully divesting to Israel Discount Bank on 9 February 1993 31. This is a historical banking entity, not a technology relationship, and predates the audit’s relevant window by over three decades.

Civil Society Scrutiny & Regulatory History

Barclays does not appear to be named in the OHCHR Database of Business Enterprises maintained pursuant to Human Rights Council Resolutions 31/36 and 53/25, nor in its 2023 update; the entities named in available material are predominantly Israeli-domiciled banks such as Bank Hapoalim, Bank Leumi, and Bank of Jerusalem, and companies operating directly in or for settlements 323334. No public evidence identified placing Barclays on this database.

The UN Special Rapporteur’s report “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide” (A/HRC/59/23, 2 July 2025) names Barclays, alongside BNP Paribas, among major banks that “stepped in to boost market confidence by underwriting international and domestic treasury bonds” for Israel, enabling continued military-budget funding despite a credit downgrade 3536. This is a financial (bond-underwriting) finding rather than a digital-technology finding, and the report’s discussion of surveillance, AI, cloud and Project Nimbus does not name Barclays specifically in the material reviewed 3536.

The War on Want/Palestine Solidarity Campaign/CAAT report “Barclays: Arming Israel’s Apartheid and Genocide” (May 2024) documents Barclays’ financial ties - shares, loans, and underwriting - to nine arms and military-technology companies supplying Israel, specifically naming Elbit Systems (drones, military communications, targeting equipment) as a technology supplier to Israel, while characterizing Barclays’ own relationship to Elbit as financial (shareholding/custody) rather than technological 1516171819. BankTrack separately republished coverage of this report under the title “Barclays: Banking on Apartheid” 18.

Barclays’ SEC-registered shareholding in Elbit Systems fell to zero by late October 2024, a reduction of 16,345 shares worth over $3.4 million since a 15 May 2024 filing, following 54 direct actions against Barclays UK premises by Palestine Action over roughly one year 373839404142. Barclays disputed the “divestment” characterization, stating it holds such shares only in custody for client-instructed trades and does not consider itself an “investor” in Elbit Systems 43.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign’s “Boycott Barclays” campaign reported over 1,500 individual account closures by 15 February 2024, and coverage cited roughly 5,000 closures across organized “collective closure days” in 2024, grounded in Barclays’ financial ties to arms companies supplying Israel 444546. The “Don’t Buy Into Occupation” coalition has published reports (2024 and 2025 editions) addressing corporate ties to the occupation, within which Barclays’ financing relationships have been discussed 4748.

Barclays publicly stated in 2025 it would continue as an Israeli government bond primary dealer, but public underwriting records reviewed show no Barclays-underwritten Israeli government bond issuance since January 2024, and Barclays fell from 7th to 11th of 12 primary dealers in April–June 2025 rankings 4950. Reporting also indicated Barclays had planned to withdraw from Israeli bond auctions 14. This reflects a divergence between public commitment and observed conduct on the financial axis, post-dating both the July 2024 ICJ advisory opinion and the November 2024 ICC arrest warrants, though it is a financial rather than digital-technology-conduct indicator 144950.

Barclays’ May 2025 Annual General Meeting was disrupted by Palestine-solidarity and climate protesters citing Barclays’ financing of arms companies supplying Israel, with Chair Nigel Higgins’ remarks repeatedly interrupted 51. This is governance and financial-conduct scrutiny, included for completeness though not digital-technology-specific.

No public evidence identified of regulatory or legal actions specific to technology sales by Barclays to Israeli state entities. Barclays’ own 20-F annual filings for both Barclays PLC and Barclays Bank PLC (FY2025) constitute the primary SEC disclosure record reviewed in this audit 5253.

End Notes

Footnotes

  1. https://news.microsoft.com/source/emea/features/barclays-selects-microsoft-security-solutions-to-expand-security-strategy/ ↩

  2. https://home.barclays/content/dam/home-barclays/documents/who-we-are/our-suppliers/English/v15/Information%20and%20Cyber%20Security%20SCO%20v15.0%20-%20English.pdf ↩

  3. https://www.finextra.com/pressarticle/20477/barclaycard-extends-verint-call-centre-software-deal ↩ ↩2

  4. https://search.jobs.barclays/job/whippany/verint-contact-center-support-engineer/22545/15955103 ↩

  5. https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/press-release/2024/09/barclays-doubles-private-cloud-estate-with-hpe-greenlake-cloud.html ↩ ↩2

  6. https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20240916381133/en/Barclays-Doubles-Private-Cloud-Estate-With-HPE-GreenLake-Cloud ↩ ↩2

  7. https://www.itpro.com/cloud/hybrid-cloud/barclays-extends-hpe-greenlake-contract-amid-significant-acceleration-of-hybrid-cloud-strategy ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  8. https://news.nuance.com/2013-05-08-Barclays-Uses-Nuance-Voice-Biometrics-to-Identify-Customers-by-the-Sound-of-their-Voice ↩

  9. https://www.finextra.com/newsarticle/29245/barclays-rolls-out-voice-biometrics-for-phone-banking ↩

  10. https://www.bankinfosecurity.com/barclays-faces-employee-spying-probe-a-14796 ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  11. https://www.aiaaic.org/aiaaic-repository/ai-algorithmic-and-automation-incidents/barclays-employee-spyware-monitoring ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  12. https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/20/barclays-backtracks-on-staff-surveillance-system-after-criticism.html ↩ ↩2

  13. https://www.enterprisetimes.co.uk/2020/08/10/ico-probes-barclays-over-staff-tracking-system/ ↩ ↩2

  14. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/8/15/barclays-planned-to-withdraw-from-israeli-bond-auctions-report ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  15. https://waronwant.org/sites/default/files/2024-05/Briefing_Barclays_Arming%20Israel%E2%80%99s%20Apartheid%20and%20Genocide.pdf ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  16. https://waronwant.org/news-analysis/barclays-bankrolling-genocide-apartheid ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  17. https://caat.org.uk/publications/barclays-arming-israel/ ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  18. https://www.banktrack.org/article/new_report_barclays_banking_on_apartheid ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  19. https://palestinecampaign.org/barclays-arming-israels-apartheid-and-genocide/ ↩ ↩2

  20. https://itrade.gov.il/spain/barclays-to-establish-rd-center-in-israel-to-support-their-global-operations ↩

  21. https://www.israel21c.org/barclays-launches-rd-center-in-israel/ ↩

  22. https://www.ib.barclays/contact-us/il.html ↩

  23. https://www.dnb.com/business-directory/company-profiles.barclays_bank_plc.0edcac98defd87d76cdbe795638f2729.html ↩

  24. https://www.timesofisrael.com/barclays-seeks-startups-for-new-fintech-accelerator-program-in-tel-aviv/ ↩ ↩2

  25. https://www.fintechfutures.com/bankingtech/a-look-inside-barclays-fintech-accelerator-rise ↩ ↩2

  26. https://nocamels.com/2016/10/tel-aviv-barclays-techstars-accelerator/ ↩ ↩2

  27. https://www.financemagnates.com/fintech/news/barclays-taps-tel-aviv-fintech-cyber-startup-hub/ ↩ ↩2

  28. https://home.barclays/news/2019/7/five-rapid-years-in-fintech-innovation/ ↩ ↩2

  29. https://home.barclays/news/press-releases/2019/04/barclays-accelerator-announces-2019-tel-aviv-class/ ↩ ↩2

  30. https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3731665,00.html ↩ ↩2

  31. https://www.archive.barclays.com/items/show/5354 ↩

  32. https://www.ohchr.org/en/business/bhr-database ↩

  33. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-briefing-notes/2023/06/update-database-business-enterprises-relation-occupied-palestinian ↩

  34. https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/07/05/human-rights-organizations-welcome-release-ohchrs-update-un-database-businesses ↩

  35. https://www.un.org/unispal/document/a-hrc-59-23-from-economy-of-occupation-to-economy-of-genocide-report-special-rapporteur-francesca-albanese-palestine-2025/ ↩ ↩2

  36. https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/documents/hrbodies/hrcouncil/sessions-regular/session59/advance-version/a-hrc-59-23-aev.pdf ↩ ↩2

  37. https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/barclays-israel-elbit-systems-sells-shares-weapons ↩

  38. https://palestineaction.org/barclays-divest-elbit/ ↩

  39. https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/iopt-barclays-offloads-all-shares-in-israeli-arms-company-elbit-systems-after-pressure-from-palestine-action/ ↩

  40. https://www.thenationalnews.com/business/banking/2024/10/31/barclays-has-sold-its-shares-in-israeli-defence-firm-elbit-palestine-action-says/ ↩

  41. https://bdsmovement.net/news/barclays-bank-no-longer-listed-elbit-systems-shareholder ↩

  42. https://www.ethicalconsumer.org/money-finance/palestine-boycott-success-barclays-no-longer-holds-shares-elbit-systems ↩

  43. https://www.thejc.com/news/barclays-denies-claims-of-divestment-from-israels-largest-weapons-manufacturer-m7wfp5r5 ↩

  44. https://bright-green.org/2024/02/15/over-1500-people-close-barclays-accounts-over-firms-links-to-israel/ ↩

  45. https://www.thecanary.co/uk/news/2024/02/09/barclays-israel-boycott/ ↩

  46. https://palestinecampaign.org/boycott-barclays-bank/ ↩

  47. https://dontbuyintooccupation.org/reports/dont-buy-into-occupation-report-2025/ ↩

  48. https://profundo.nl/projects/don-t-buy-into-occupation-iv/ ↩

  49. https://novaramedia.com/2026/06/08/european-banks-are-stopping-financing-israels-genocide/ ↩ ↩2

  50. https://www.marketscreener.com/quote/stock/BARCLAYS-PLC-9583556/news/Barclays-to-Continue-as-Primary-Dealer-for-Israeli-Bonds-47660944/ ↩ ↩2

  51. https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2025-05-07/barclays-attracts-fresh-anti-israel-protests-at-shareholder-meeting ↩

  52. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000312069/000031206926000004/bcs-20251231.htm ↩

  53. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0000312070/000031207026000006/bbplc-20251231.htm ↩