Financial institutions are facing a new reality in today’s economic situation, with pressure to deliver improved transparency and risk management, reduce costs, and successfully navigate an evolving and consolidated financial ecosystem. Ensuring customer confidence and effectively managing risk can determine survival in today’s volatile banking environment. At the centre is information. Institutions that effectively secure, manage and control their data are best positioned to retain and acquire customers, comply with regulations, and protect their reputation from both internal and external threats.

The reputation and competitive aspects are often much more costly than any government or industry penalty and cannot be downplayed. Banks, credit card companies, and credit-reporting institutions need to continuously strive to keep their customer data secure in the face of growing data volumes and proliferation of endpoints and mobile devices. They also need to be concerned about brand-damaging data breaches from a sophisticated underground economy targeting credit cards, bank account credentials and other confidential data. Not surprisingly, a DSCI-KPMG study on data security and privacy in Indian organisations revealed that 57 per cent of Indian financial institutions consider information security top priority and the remaining 43 percent consider it critical.

As the pace of information growth accelerates, digital infrastructure expands and new computing platforms are adopted, security professionals have more to manage than ever before. Banks now require a focus on security continuity that allows them to continuously respond to internal and external changes. Moving forward, banking institutions need to develop a security strategy that is risk-based and policy driven, information-centric, and operationalised across well managed infrastructure.

Today, banks are struggling to just manage their information which is spread out and accessed across diverse locations. Protecting it from being compromised by insiders and attackers is a bigger challenge altogether.

Additionally, these challenges are compounded by increased regulatory pressure, new frameworks by governments and industry bodies, change in legislation and internal mandates that need to be adhered to. According to Symantec’s State of Enterprise Security Survey 2010 which included financial institutions, the typical Indian enterprise is exploring at least 19 different standards or frameworks – eight of which they are currently using. This means while business information becomes harder to manage and secure, there is increased pressure to protect data breaches.

To access this article, please write to contact@finsight-media.com