Cybersecurity for Financial Institutions
Over the past 12 months, during the COVID-19 pandemic, financial services institutions globally have seen a surge in cyber-attacks and attempted attacks. The shift to home working and the increased flow of data from IoT or consumer devices has presented new security vulnerabilities, with questions raised about how to protect sensitive data and prevent fraud.
Financial Services organizations recognize the need to accelerate their efforts to reduce their business risk exposure by improving governance and cybersecurity as an integral part of their digital transformation. However, achieving this is proving challenging, as research commissioned on behalf of Atos and its key technology partners has revealed1: see Atos Report Realization for Change
- 81% of Financial Services organizations took a more digital approach to risk management in response to the global pandemic, but 62% of those who have started digitizing compliance processes are finding this challenging.
- Only 44% are automating security and compliance policies, and around half have not developed any digital products or services to maintain regulatory compliance.
- 69% agree that cybersecurity is the single biggest component of their risk management strategies; however, just 41% are undertaking a threats assessment to understand the risks they may be exposed to.
The Financial Services Cybersecurity Strategy addresses a number of key areas where we can work with customers to address Cybersecurity challenges as part of digital business transformation.
Strategic Key Areas
Journey to Zero Trust
The accelerating trend towards digital transformation, with customers having distributed digital access to products and services, the critical importance of data protection, a digital workplace for employees, and the migration of services to cloud platforms, is undermining traditional perimeter security boundaries based on firewalls, where trust in activities is implicit within the Enterprise Network. Atos and its partners are well positioned to support financial institutions on their Journey to Zero Trust, where the new trust boundaries are based upon identity, data usage privileges, and access policy management and enforcement, allowing a more fine-grained verification of digital interactions.
The Zero Trust approach stems from the understanding that the traditional security no longer provides effective protection, as boundaries are now expanding with IT modernisation, cloud adoption and mobility
Data protection and security
Data protection and security is a fundamental concern in the financial services and insurance industry. Whether that be ensuring that data is accessed only by those individuals with appropriate privilege for legitimate usage, maintaining privacy, ensuring data integrity, avoiding loss, and making sure that it is only used for legitimate purposes.
Digital Identity and Access Security
Digital Identity and Access Security is the set of business processes and tools for providing access to the right resources at the right time for the right reasons. Identity and access management secures identities, controls access and ensures policy enforcement and compliance across the organization.
Digital Workplace Security
As remote working becomes the new normal, extra consideration is required around ways in which data is accessed and data security profiles. Alongside the cyber security issues referenced already, employees are now working with sensitive data in less secure home-based environments. So, data security as part of evolving digital workplaces is critical.
Trusted Customer Experience (CX) secure by design
Finance as many other heavily regulated industries need to improve their security posture by addressing compliance and security requirements as an integral part of the CX-driven digital transformation process with services secure by design via DevSecOps.
DevSecOps easily distributes the responsibility for security in the pipeline and helps maintain the required speed and scale. The perfect mix lies in the balance between capabilities, technologies and culture.
Threat Intelligence and Proactive Security
To better understand the threat actors, their motivation, and how they operate before they launch an attack, financial institutions must use threat intelligence data and information to assist in making informative decision on how to harden lines of defense in an effort to adapt, better deploy security controls and implement proactive security measures.
Cloud Security
With many financial institutions now adopting multiple public clouds, managing the complexity of security compliance across multiple cloud service providers is fast becoming a key consideration. This helps to efficiently remove blind spots inherited from traditional security solutions and native cloud service provider (CSP) tools that operate in silos. The end-to-end governance of cyber security across hybrid cloud landscape is important to ensure that controls and monitoring are orchestrated effectively both in-house and across cloud service providers.
Strategic Key Areas
Journey to Zero Trust
The accelerating trend towards digital transformation, with customers having distributed digital access to products and services, the critical importance of data protection, a digital workplace for employees, and the migration of services to cloud platforms, is undermining traditional perimeter security boundaries based on firewalls, where trust in activities is implicit within the Enterprise Network. Atos and its partners are well positioned to support financial institutions on their Journey to Zero Trust, where the new trust boundaries are based upon identity, data usage privileges, and access policy management and enforcement, allowing a more fine-grained verification of digital interactions.
The Zero Trust approach stems from the understanding that the traditional security no longer provides effective protection, as boundaries are now expanding with IT modernisation, cloud adoption and mobility
Data protection and security
Data protection and security is a fundamental concern in the financial services and insurance industry. Whether that be ensuring that data is accessed only by those individuals with appropriate privilege for legitimate usage, maintaining privacy, ensuring data integrity, avoiding loss, and making sure that it is only used for legitimate purposes.
Digital Identity and Access Security
Digital Identity and Access Security is the set of business processes and tools for providing access to the right resources at the right time for the right reasons. Identity and access management secures identities, controls access and ensures policy enforcement and compliance across the organization.
Digital Workplace Security
As remote working becomes the new normal, extra consideration is required around ways in which data is accessed and data security profiles. Alongside the cyber security issues referenced already, employees are now working with sensitive data in less secure home-based environments. So, data security as part of evolving digital workplaces is critical.
Trusted Customer Experience (CX) secure by design
Finance as many other heavily regulated industries need to improve their security posture by addressing compliance and security requirements as an integral part of the CX-driven digital transformation process with services secure by design via DevSecOps.
DevSecOps easily distributes the responsibility for security in the pipeline and helps maintain the required speed and scale. The perfect mix lies in the balance between capabilities, technologies and culture.
Threat Intelligence and Proactive Security
To better understand the threat actors, their motivation, and how they operate before they launch an attack, financial institutions must use threat intelligence data and information to assist in making informative decision on how to harden lines of defense in an effort to adapt, better deploy security controls and implement proactive security measures.
Cloud Security
With many financial institutions now adopting multiple public clouds, managing the complexity of security compliance across multiple cloud service providers is fast becoming a key consideration. This helps to efficiently remove blind spots inherited from traditional security solutions and native cloud service provider (CSP) tools that operate in silos. The end-to-end governance of cyber security across hybrid cloud landscape is important to ensure that controls and monitoring are orchestrated effectively both in-house and across cloud service providers.
Insights
Blog
Why Financial Services is more vulnerable than ever, and what cyber threats to defend against
While financial services companies have always been a prime target for cybercrime, there are two critical reasons why they are more vulnerable than ever before.
Blog
Cybersecurity in the digital banking age
Digital banking is unlocking new opportunities for consumers and businesses alike, but at the same time it is also opened up a new front for criminals.
Report (1)
Realization for change: accelerating action now in Financial Services
To improve their risk management posture, businesses are prioritizing investments in securing their customer and employee interactions, with 69% agreeing that cybersecurity is the single biggest component of their risk management strategy.
Opinion paper
Digital Vision: Digital Banking
Safer Banking – Safety and banking should always be synonymous. The digital world of banking creates new opportunities but new threats too – banks and their customers need to be protected.
Blog
Prescriptive security for banking institutions
As digital has become part of the banking world, so too have sophisticated cyber-attackers. How can we ensure our banks remain safe from cybercrime? Prescriptive security offers one route.
Infography
Accelerating security now
Discover the driving forces of digital transformation for financial services and insurance in Regulatory compliance, risk management, and security.
Solution
High-performance payment HSM for financial institutions
In close collaboration with major international banking networks, financial institutions and strategic partners, Atos has designed a range of hardware security modules that meet today’s market requirements.
Our experts
Jean-Pierre Le Treut
Global Financial Services, Head of Cybersecurity & Cloud
Boubacar Camara
Global Cybersecurity Business Development Manager
